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I just finished The Chanters of Tremaris trilogy, (The Singer of All Songs, The Waterless Sea, and The Tenth Power) by Kate Constable.
Wow.
These books are amazing. The first thing that struck me about it was how utterly beautiful the language and world is. The cultures are well developed and the characters are vivid. The magic is stunning. The action is engaging and intense. I literally could not put any of these books down.
The Singer of All Songs: Calwyn, a young priestess-in-training in Antaris, the icy nunnery-like setting of her childhood, is performing the ritual strengthening of the great ice wall one morning when she comes across something extremely unusual. An Outsider. An injured man is lying inside the impenetrable wall, either delerious or pursued by something more powerful and dangerous than Calwyn could ever have imagined - Samis, a chanter determined to master all the kinds of magic, making him as powerful as a god. When she leaves Antaris with Darrow for the first time in her life, she is far from prepared for the real world, or the dangers of a quest of this magnitude.
The Waterless Sea: The second book follows Calwyn and her newfound friends to the desolate land of Merithuros as they pursue a band of kidnapped children with the chanter's gift of ironcraft. Soon they uncover the terrible secret of the Merithuran empire and Darrow's past seems inexplicably linked to it. Meanwhile, the desert is slowly eating away at Calwyn's friend Halasaa, who is connected with the dead, dry land in a way none of the others feel. Calwyn is the only one who understands and, though she is steadily (and alarmingly) growing in her magical skills she feels she can do nothing for him or the desert. When two powers of Merithuros clash with Calwyn and her friends in the middle, she attempts something far beyond her power that will have consequences far beyond her biggest fears.
The Tenth Power: When Calwyn returns to Antaris in hopes of healing what broke in her after the conflict in Merithuros, she finds only trouble and terrible scars that Samis' magic has left behind. All of Tremaris seems to be dying - chanters all over the world are catching a terrible disease that kills their magic and eventually them, lands are withering, cities are falling under political unrest. All of this seems to be connected to the mysterious secret the high priestess of Antaris holds. Calwyn, weak and broken but determined, fights despair and the unnaturally long and harsh winter to find th other half of a broken artifact that may save Tremaris. While her world crumbles around her, she seeks for the answer ... but the answer is not at all what she expects.
Content-wise, these are fairly clean. There's a little bit of gore, not much though. The religion is interesting - the Goddess Taris features quite a bit, but even though it's prominent I pretty easily ignored it. There's little to no language, that I can remember. There's also a tad bit of New Age sounding principles, but I caught that pretty easily too. All in all, if you can ignore a bit of disagreeable material, these books are well worth the read. It's one of the most vivid and colorful worlds I've ever seen and the characters stayed with me long after I finished.
_________________ 2 Corinthians 3:17 ~ Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
eleutheria - Greek for liberty
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