Blood of the South

How very exciting this new Aelf Fen books was! The Preorder link is posted so order your copy right now. Thanks Netgalley and Severn for letting me preview this one at this time for a review. I give it 5 stars.

When you read this: "When Lassair encounters a veiled noblewoman on the quay at Cambridge one morning.. she assumes involvement with her will be brief. She has no idea that the woman, alone but for her infant child, brings both mystery and peril. Then a devastating flood hits the fens..Lassair, in the company of a sheriff's officer, wonders..What?"

How could you know how connected Lassair would be in all of this? If you read "Land of the Silver Dragon", you might just begin to suspect that Lassair's family of origin is expending. What ever happened to her Uncle who fled England after the Battle of Hastings? What does South refer to and what is this we have learned about Iceland?

How do a baby boy, and Icelandic sea captain and a Norman sheriff's officer begin to bring astonishing changes to Aelf Fen? You really must find out, so glad that I did and cannot wait for the next book because all of my questions were not answered.

I'm not positive, but I think this is story number six in the Aelf Fen Mystery series by author Alys Clare. I have read several of her novels in the Hawkenlye series and was intrigued to see what this set of novels was about. I was definitely not disappointed. For someone living in the American South the fens of England carry a mystique all by themselves so when you add in a mystery set during Norman times this was pretty hard for me to resist.

Since I had not read any previous novels in the series I wanted to see how easily I could become assimilated into the world created here by both geography and character. Make no mistake, the location in the fens area for the major portion of this book plays a definite role in the story and Alys Clare has described it wonderfully for someone who has never experienced it first hand. The torrential rainfall combined with a high tide produces flooding on a widespread scale which contributes to the discovery of the body of a woman. Lassair, healer and student of Gurdyman, was requested by Jack Chevestrier to accompany him from Cambridge to Aelf Fen to try to locate the family of the wealthy woman and her infant son who have arrived in town with no information of who her husband's relatives are or where they live. Since they both are on the scene when the woman's dead body is discovered and Chevestrier works with the sheriff of Cambridge and Lassair knows the fens like the back of her hand they are instructed to solve the riddle of the identity of both women, the living and the dead.

If you are a follower of this series you will be glad to know that this book is almost equally divided between what is happening to Lassair in England and Rollo Guiscard as he makes his way in the treacherous business of acting as a spy for King William. By traveling throughout the East he has seen the results of clashes between Christians, Jews, and Turks in the Holy Land. His destination now is Constantinople where he must try, with no credentials at all, to gain an audience with Alexius Comnenus, ruler of this great city with the enemy Selijuk Turks on its doorsteps.

This was an interesting way to present this portion of the series; take two of the main characters and have them advance the story arc forward while keeping them apart. I had very little problem with understanding how this portion of the story fit with what might have come before, although it did make me curious and desirous of reading the previous novels. Instead of having the entire story written in an 800 page novel which can be rather overwhelming to contemplate, here the stories were presented in manageable pieces that allowed for full character development in addition to a good mystery for me to help solve. I enjoyed this very much. The mysticism didn't overwhelm the story or the characters because it simply seemed a normal part of Lassair and an augmentation of her healer gifts. She made great strides to becoming an independent woman in this novel and I'm interested in seeing where her relationship with the shining stone will take her.

I received an ARC of this novel through NetGalley.