Kelley's Reviews > Stranger at the Wedding

** spoiler alert ** With The Ladies of Mandrigyn, Barbara Hambly won a place among my favorite authors. With this book, she reaffirms that place. Not only does she set up fascinating fantastic situations in a fluid, detailed, readable style, but she writes about the kinds of heroines I love to read about, first the fiercely capable mercenary Starhawk and now the unconventional, sometimes awkward but equally capable magician Kyra. (I need to mention as an aside that I love Hambly's use of the word "wizard" as a gender-neutral term. Not enough fantasy novelists do this. Diane Duane does it, but off-hand I can't think of another one.) I came to like Kyra almost immediately and was eager to see her triumph, both in magic and in love. I also appreciated that she was fallible, prone to the occasional mistake in judgment; because of this, it mattered all the more when her capability shone through.

Kyra is the book's big selling point for me, but by no means is she its sole virtue. Other things it does very well:

1) Kyra is not its sole noteworthy female character. The moving force behind the plot is the love and loyalty between two sisters, and younger sister Alix, while more conventional than Kyra, is revealed to be smart and capable in her own way. She could easily have been written as a pallid, simple damsel in distress, a foil and contrast to the awesome Kyra. Plenty of writers might have gone that route, but Hambly doesn't. Kyra also has a female mentor, Rosamond, who appears in a few key scenes, and even Kyra's mother, presented as a flibbertigibbet for most of the story, turns out to have a bit more to her than Kyra (and we) had initially thought.

2) This book is disturbing. I mean that in a good way. Those inclined to dismiss fantasy as pure escapism should take note of the way Hambly puts a fantastic spin on a real-world evil. The character revealed to be the villain is thoroughly nauseating, all the more so because he has a distinct charm that makes him dangerous. It's a relief to see him vanquished. Yet the pain he leaves in his wake is tragic and moving.

3) The plain, gangly red-haired woman gets the guy. I can't not love that. (Actually, both sisters turn out to be winners in love, and are never actual rivals; I love that too.)

This book leaves me eager to read more Hambly. I may try Bride of the Rat God next -- as I understand, another Hambly tale that focuses on the friendship between two very different women.