Customer Reviews

Blind Vision

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The Duchy of Montrouge is under a death sentence -- the King's seers have foretold its fall in battle next Spring. Rather than repudiate all seers as worthless charlatans, young Bernard, recently named Duke, does something his uncle, the previous Duke, would never have accepted. He hires his own seer to find a future in which his Duchy not only survives but thrives.

Ms. Krause starts the book quickly, with four plot twists in as many pages. The seer, Phillipe, is the son of the seer banished by the old Duke, and a boyhood friend of Bernard. Bernard's primary advisor is his sister, whom the old Duke claimed died as an infant. And she doesn't believe in prophecies, having spent her life under the curse of an early death that has alienated her from everyone except her brother.

Further plot complications (they are many and varied) arise out of believable character actions. The characters themselves change and grow in response to the challenges they face, again with perfect veracity, neither clinging stubbornly to a course of action only an idiot would espouse nor blindly walking into danger for no reason other than to advance the plot, as all too frequently happens in fantasy novels.

But the chief joy of the book is the well-reasoned and logically consistent portrayal of the seers themselves. There are limits to their powers, with each session a balancing act among the triad of range, accuracy and number of visions. To see further in the future, the seer must sacrifice either the accuracy or the amount of his visions, with the result that the sliver of time foreseen may be too small to interpret. This contrasts favorably with the more common, simplistic view of prophecy.

Also, the conundrum of a seer trying to describe people and places he has seen only in visions so that they may be identified is well explored. This makes far more sense than assuming his visions burst upon him with omniscience or that a poor man from a backwater village has intimate knowledge of the nobility, from greatest to least, and all the unmarked and unremarkable fields and streams throughout the kingdom where key battles may occur.

Blind Vision will drag you completely into Phillipe's world, as you struggle with him to make sense of his prophecies in time to save Bernard, his sister, and the rest of the Duchy. Hopefully, there will be more books in this series by this wonderfully talented author.

-- reviewed for the Science Fiction Romance newsletter

I stayed up pretty late last night finishing the book--I just couldn't put it down. I wanted to find out what happened to each character--which future would play itself out--I wasn't disappointed.

On a world much like England during the Middle Ages, the Duchy of Montrouge is in a severe state of decline even though the king has blessed the new duke, Bernard d'Albin. The king's seer had a vision of the duchy house in flames, Bernard dead, and another person declared the Duke. The vision spread across the land taking away the hope of the people but Bernard is determined to rule his birthright. In desperation, the duke asks that Phillipe become the Ducal Seer and save Montrouge from war or annexation.

Phillipe has no choice but to accept the position even though he knows that keeping Bernard in power will be one of the most difficult things he can attempt to do. To change the visions of the future he must befriend the Lady Zuleika d'Albin, Bernard's sister. The blemish on her must change from Goddess cursed to Goddess blessed. Since the ducal title is passed through the female line Zuli must marry and have heirs. By the time Zuli is convinced she has a happy future ahead of her if she wants it, she and Phillipe fall in love with each other. This unwanted emotion can never come to fruition for dynastic and other reasons.

Marguerite Krause is a shining new talent on the story telling horizon by creating a world so real and life like that the audience will actually believe it exists. The characters are three dimensional and very likable, not because of their virtues but because of their weaknesses. BLIND VISION is the kind of tale most of us like to read but rarely have the opportunity to do so because very few authors have the ability to craft such an amazing tale

Harriet Klausner