Adventures In The Caldryn Parliament
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I know I’ve written about Jenny Schwartz before (okay, more than once), but her work is just so good! In my last blog post about her work, I mentioned a new series she was working on (The Caldryn Parliament) but that I was waiting until the third book came out, so that I could read them all together and not be left in suspense. The third book has in fact come out, so I’m ready to review the series. However, I note that the author plans three more books in the series, so I might be premature. Nevertheless, I shall forge onward.
Warning: mild spoilers ahead.
The first book Stars Die sets the stage in a distant future (or maybe the very distant past?) in the Realm, which is so far from Earth that our home planet is never referred to in any way. The story proceeds with mostly human characters, some of who have access to what we would call magic. Humans who can access magic are called witches (regardless of gender), with a couple sub-specialties having their own designations: ward keepers and portalists.
I don’t want to over-explain the magic system because letting the author guide the reader through understanding is one of the great pleasures of the series. Our protagonist is a ward keeper in her mid-20s named Vanda Kavanagh, who has just been called back to her home planet to take up a hereditary position as Warden, the ward keeper in charge of the wards that protect the Caldryn Parliament, the governing system for the Realm.
The parliamentary wards were built a thousand years earlier by one of Vanda’s ancestors, who was apparently a genius ward keeper who did a proper bang-up job on the protective wards. Vanda travels via portal to the Parliament, picking up a gremlin along the way (no, I’m not going to explain about the gremlin, except to say that it features heavily in the stories), and walks into a social and political mess. She also immediately understands that the wards for which she is warden are not working properly, for some reason.
I can’t really say more about the plot without extensive explanation, which would detract from the joy of reading the book. I will mention that Vanda meets a member of Parliament named Justus, who will become a friend and ally.
Moving on, the second book Hexes Fly continues the story with the same characters from the first novel, plus adding in new ones as needed. The blurb for the book gives a solid summary without giving away too much, so I shall endeavor to do the same. Vanda (and company) attend a traditional spring ball at the Parliament, only for things to go badly awry when some young witches play a “prank,” involving casting hexes on attendees. The situation deteriorates further when attempts to break the hexes cause them to morph into much more serious curses, which will become permanent in just a few days’ time.
Vanda and her allies have to figure out how to break the curses in time, as well as discover who engineered the whole situation. Justus, as one of the victims of the curses, doesn’t have a terribly active role in this book, but his relationship with Vanda nonetheless deepens.
And the third book, which was just released recently, is called Rogues Lie. This book had a little less action than the previous two but is still genuinely compelling. Vanda and Justus sort out who they are to each other (which involves Vanda discovering who her father is…you’ll never guess! I know I didn’t…) and many other plots come together, with a promise that we might, in some future book, be introduced to a genuinely alien AI species. Intriguing premise…
Okay, I do have to mention one serious problem I have with these books. The editing is not what it should be. Mostly, that comes down to punctuation, which is such an easy fix! Please please please, don’t be so parsimonious with your commas, Jenny! They don’t cost much, and they are essential, and they are worth every penny! An example:
“When the older woman looked around at the click of the door closing her thin-lip disapproval revealed how much she regretted that laxity.”
I had to read that sentence twice before I understood what the author meant. Anytime I have to stop and go back to re-read something, I am taken out of the story. And I don’t want to leave this wonderful story! Instead, that sentence could have been more clearly written:
“When the older woman looked around at the click of the door closing, her thin-lipped disapproval revealed how much she regretted that laxity.”
This may seem like a small, nit-picky thing. But when it happens multiple times in all three books, it is a distraction from Schwartz’ beautiful stories, which is honestly just heart-breaking. Get a better editor!
Having said all that, I will say that although all of these books are available on Kindle Unlimited for free (which is how I first read them), I nonetheless purchased all three. They are so very good that I just had to have them. Give them a try. You won’t regret it.
