The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy / Martha Wells

The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy: The Wizard Hunters (443 p.), The Ships of Air (475 p.), The Gate of Gods (484 p.) by Martha Wells (1402 p. total in paperback).

I was sick all during the holiday weekend (boo!) and too muzzy-headed to concentrate on anything new, so I went for comfort reads. The Fall of Ile-Rien may be my favorite fantasy trilogy ever. I'm fond of all of Martha Wells' books, but I really, really love Tremaine Valiarde, our main character. (Tremaine would object to being called a "heroine.") She's drawn into her country's war effort because it's dangerous and she has a death wish; she discovers that she wants to stay alive because the enemy sneers at her and damn it, if she's gonna die it's gonna be on her terms. I know I'm doing a really bad job of selling this, but Tremaine just delights me as a character. She doesn't follow the traditional fantasy young-hero-coming-into-power path, which makes her growth and experiences much more interesting to me.

Plus the books are full of all of Martha Wells' strengths: well-drawn settings, interesting and varied characters, culture clashes that make sense from both sides. Some day I'll figure out how to describe her books well enough that everyone else will want to read them, too. If we lived in a just universe, she'd be a bestselling author.

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The Gate of Gods / Martha Wells

The Gate of Gods by Martha Wells (The Fall of Ile-Rien book 3). 484 p.

Third book in a trilogy--how to talk about it without spoilers? I could reiterate how much I love these books.... One thing I like about this one: the war ends in this book, but that doesn't magically fix everything. The characters who got married for political reasons realize they love one another, but that doesn't make everything all better either--it doesn't even make their relationship all sparkly and perfect. Yay.

A side note: I read this author's blog while she was writing the book. She didn't know whether her publisher would buy it until she finished it. So if you're ever wondering why an author didn't finish a series you were reading...it may not be by choice.

The Ships of Air / Martha Wells

The Ships of Air (The Fall of Ile-Rien, book 2) by Martha Wells. 475 pp.

Tremaine and Ilias have to deal with inter-world politicking as well as mutual cultural misunderstandings as they try to find out more about the Gardier and ways to fight them. I don't think this suffers from "middle book syndrome" because a lot of important stuff happens here, but I have friends who disagree with me.

The Wizard Hunters / Martha Wells

The Wizard Hunters (The Fall of Ile-Rien, book 1) by Martha Wells. 443 pp.

Martha Wells, one of my favorite fantasy authors, excels at world-building without info-dumping. In this case Ile-Rien is a fantasy amalgam of France and England, and it's a couple of years into a war with an unknown enemy, the Gardier, who use airships to bomb the cities but never communicate with the people they're attacking--Ile-Rien has no idea what the Gardier want. Tremaine Valiarde is drawn into a last-ditch effort to use sorcery to try to fight the Gardier, and ends up in a completely different world, where Gil & Ilias (the wizard hunters of the title) end up becoming her allies even though the use of sorcery is anathema to them. The worldbuilding is interesting and the characters are great; I particularly love Tremaine, who is prickly and abrupt and clumsy but gets the job done.