The Ships of Merior: Book 2 (The Wars of Light and Shadow) Paperback – 1 November 2004

There's action and clever plans, there are quiet emotional scenes, there's vicious manipulation and sick burns.

[There are no explicit plot spoilers, although I describe aspects of character development and the flow of the book in broad generalities.]Ships of Merior picks up five years after the climactic conflict described in Curse of the Mistwraith. Lysaer s’Ilessid has devoted this time to unifying factions in the Kingdom of Rathain while Arithon s’Ffalenn has gone to ground in disguise, hoping to deny Lysaer from having any target for curse-driven violence.After the abrupt “jump to the next point of interest” feel of the previous book, the progression here feels much smoother. The necessary stage setting is out of the way and more time and depth are given to the main characters as they pursue different strategies to avoid or embrace war. I found it particularly interesting that we continue to get scenes from Lysaer’s perspective, but Arithon has become a black box – we only gain insight into his character through the lens of the people around him.The real stars of this volume are the supporting cast. From returning characters like Talith and Jieret, to new, rewarding characters like Captain Dhirken and the s’Brydion brothers, everyone is fully realized. Each character earns a tragic or triumphant character arc later in the story as a result of their interactions with Lysaer and Arithon. While Dakar is the most commonly cited character to have a rewarding arc, I personally enjoyed the arcs of Lord Diegan and Mayor Pesquil even more.The focus on world-building zooms out just slightly in this volume and provides more context around some of the mysteries left unexplained in Volume 1. If you occasionally paused incredulously while reading Curse of the Mistwraith because something just didn’t make sense in alignment with standard fantasy tropes, you will appreciate the onion peeling in Volume 2. So much still remains hidden under the surface at this stage (with 9 books to go!), but enough answers appear that you can begin making your own deductions about the seemingly irrational ways that the greater powers on the planet behave.Ships of Merior is technically just the first half of a complete story so it cannot truly be rated in isolation. It has a very satisfying “mid-season” climax but the overarching conclusion of Story Arc II comes in Warhost of Vastmark. You’ll probably want to have Volume 3 on hand so you can continue reading uninterrupted!

I already know I will be re-reading this series and might even bump it up to five stars.This is the second book in the Wars of Light and Shadow Series. This series will probably turn into one of my favourites. It's a bit early, since there's going to be eleven books, but I'm pretty confident.I love the characters. Especially Arithon. He's such a wonderful, deeply flawed, character.Yes, it's dense. Yes, I play the 'old English word I have to look up or a made-up fantasy word?' game a lot as a non native speaker (thank you Kindle for your dictionary!) but the glossary is extremely helpful. The series requires patience and an attentive reader. It is high fantasy!I love the descriptive prose and it fits the tone of the series. Wurts knows how to write beautifully and there are so many layers to this book. I can't wait to read it all again to find all the things I've missed between the lines.This second book is easier than the first since the world is a bit more established and the concepts felt more familiar, but it's also a bit slower because it was originally supposed to be a part of a larger volume.The series offers a richly detailed world, filled with lore and history. It feels like every word is hand picked. If you're a high fantasy fan and enjoy beautiful prose along the lines of Guy Gavriel Kay and Tad Williams, give Wars of Light and Shadow a try.

A new amazing journey into the world of Athera featuring returning and new characters, several different factions and interests, powerful world-building and a larger-than-life story expertly woven by the never-ending imagination of Janny Wurts, a master of delivering events presented from new angles, whose facets often revise the reader opinions at every new turn.This book raises the stakes of the story even higher beyond the layout of The Curse of the Mistwraith, and it is seamlessly connected with the next book, Warhost of Vastmark, which in fact represents the end of this Arc.The story opens five years after the tragic events in Deshir, the two half-brothers, ripe with their legacy gifts and blessed with longevity by the Five Centuries Fountain, hopelessly compromised by a deep geas-inspired mutual hatred spawn by tragically different reasons, carry on with their lives in a so diametrically opposed manner: Lysaer, tall, blond, charming, a master of statecraft and sole repository of the power of Light, with the support of Etarra pushes a common cause and march to found his new kingdom in Tysan. His sole purpose is to rid the world of Athera, even at the cost of great personal sacrifice, from the threat of the Master of Shadow. Said Master, small and lithe Arithon, conflicted and desolate, after the tragedy of Deshir and the loss of his mage-sight finds a bit of solace in cultivating his greatest gift and in running away from Lysaer and the world, lest he gives in again to the powerful constraints the hate-geas imposed by the mysterious and only temporarily tamed Mistwraith.However, while Lysaer scion of the High Kings of Tysan earns the admiration of the Townborns, his natural enemies, and the enmity of the Clanborns, the traditional supporters of the Kings rule, and pursues his strategy of creating an alliance against the Master of Shadow by reconciling city factions and massing his army, his elusive and quiet brother desperately guards his privacy and intentions, with the result that many only perceive "the ironies of Arithon's nature and see nothing beyond surface paradox" and conclude he is a threat to their world’s balance, paramount amongst them Dakar the Mad Prophet, one of the most interesting character of the book.But indeed the reality, the truth is not so simple.The conflict that is taking shape has a multi-layered quality of complexity, and the reader soon realizes that each party, in championing interests often diametrically opposed, has a moral high ground they adhere to even if it is sorrowfully wrong or misguided. An incredible example of the credibility and effect of this is when, at the demise of a character certainly not loved, I felt a big regret and sense of loss.Both warned on their birth world that “the powers of mages and the burdens of a ruler make an incompatible legacy”, the princes keep the tenet at heart. Lysaer hearkens his sire’s words and strives to be a good and compassionate leader, "a mind undivided between the laws that must govern humanity and the uncanny secrets of the mysteries", thus discarding any possibility of redemption of his mage-trained half-brother, taking bitterly upon himself to shoulder Athera's plight and to pass judgment.Arithon upholds this sorrow-taught conviction, too. He tries to avoid all conflicts, shunning the help offered by the Clans which feel threatened by Lysaer policy, and painfully tries to hold onto his uncompromising integrity, no matter the cost. But his empathy, his compassion for the suffering of others, a great contradiction in his heritage and experience, shows a man so damaged that very few can really understand the deep motivations of his actions. The princes’ ambivalence foils any attempt to truly frame them, yet not one character meeting them is unchanged for better or for worse, and lends new point of views and nuances for the reader to unriddle a part of their inner selves.Inevitably the Master of Shadow and the Prince of the West, both extremely gifted and capable of refined subtleties, of masterminding complicated plans of actions and counteractions, to all outer appearances so sure of themselves but indeed far from perfect and heavily burdened by the natural frailty of human character, as their strategy unfold are going to have a worldwide impact in the warring and distrustful-of-magic Five Kingdoms of Athera. On this layered stage, the Fellowship of Sorcerers, bent on finding a cure for the Mistwraith curse and guarding the future of Athera, fitting the events to their own agenda of neutrality; The Koriani witches, embittered and set on restoring their former glory, locked in a silent rivalry with the Sorcerers and sure of the righteousness of their quest to preserve their World balance by opposing Arithon’s unpredictability.To the mix are also interwoven the stories of single individuals, a widow who is afraid of the sea, a disgraced captain... all their actions count, and represent a fundamental element in the tapestry of the story. Not by chance, along with the coherent plot developments and the masterfully managed growing cast of characters, the lines of morality and certainties blur even more, the good and the evil truly "depend on where you are standing" and the rich twists and surprises sweep away the reader in an incredible variety of settings, landscapes and encounters.The story never loses focus, simply all the details matter and make for great entertainment; moments of levity and gravity are genially interspersed and concur to the bigger picture (if I thought the mayhem at Jaelot’s gate was hilarious, the scenes in the Alestron armory are absolutely precious!).On the writing style, I will not dwell much, but I will never stop singing the praises of the great mastery of language of the author, and her ability to paint scenes and emotions with words. Her stories build slowly, but after a few chapters, perseverance is highly rewarded with epic journeys of the utmost intensity.The more I read, the more I see Janny Wurts is really a star of fantasy literature. Anyone who loves deep, intriguing, challenging, unique stories with characters who encompass the full spectrum of human nature (not just the bleak, not just the good), able to constantly amuse, surprise and move the reader, cannot absolutely miss her.

Very very good