Review of THE WIZARD OF KARRES by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, & Dave Freer

Baen, August 2004

Althought they have defeated the worm world and the pirates of the Agandar, Captain Pausert and his teenage sidekick, Goth, have more problems. For one thing, a tiny vatch is causing trouble--and Pausert's hooks offer no control over this vatch. For another, the Imperial Security Service has decided Pausert and his passengers are trouble. For a third thing, an ancient nanite plague has returned after centuries of quiet. The plague takes over bodies, controls minds, and seeks to dominate the galaxy--and all life on it. Pausert suspects that the nanites have taken control of at least some senior officials in the ISS--but that doesn't mean he can see any way to escape.

Pausert, Goth, and various friends, family, agents, and their vatch-sidekick are hunted through the galaxy, attacked by both the ISS and by remnants of the Agandar pirates, forced to retreat to a circus ship, thrown into another time, and finally forced to confront the plague itself--after it had already seized control of much of the Empire. In the meantime, Pausert struggles with his klatha (magical) powers--seeking to understand the magic that the witches do, but that come so slowly to him.

In THE WIZARD OF KARRES, authors Mercedes Lackey (see more BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by Lackey), Eric Flint (see more BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by Flint), and Dave Freer (see more BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by Freer) combine to continue the story originally created by author James H. Schmitz in THE WITCHES OF KARRES (see our review). WITCHES is a wonderful story and WIZARD does its best to maintain the characters, pace of adventure, story-line, and world-building originally created by Schmitz.

The result falls short of perfect. WIZARD doesn't offer the same level of space-opera adventure as WITCHES, nor, because the characters know one another, does it allow the same level of discovery that added so much to the first book. Still, fans of the original WITCHES (like me) will find a lot to enjoy in this sequel. Falling short of the truly wonderful WITCHES certainly doesn't mean that WIZARDS isn't an enjoyable treat.

Three Stars

Reviewed 10/24/04

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