Faliance is a world where there is traffic and trade between humans and Fey, elflike beings who control powerful magic. Lord Altimere is powerful, both in influence and in magic. The former because he is the Queen’s most trusted advisor—and, if his plans succeed, her consort as well. The latter because of a secret. He has abducted a human, Rebecca Beauvelley, middle child of the Earl of Barimuir. Even overlooking her withered left arm, she is not a beauty in the sight of humans, but the Fey are attracted to the auras of humans, and Rebecca’s exceeds even the most comely of human auras by a factor of ten. An enchanted collar which Altimere has placed around her neck makes her unable to resist obeying his orders. And each time she has an affair, carefully arranged by Altimere, with one of the Fey, some of their magical power passes through her to Altimere. So it was until Altimere was absent from the court, and Lady Sian of Sea Edge, one of the Queen’s cousins, came for a visit, discovered that Rebecca was secretly a prisoner in her own mind, and freed her of Altimere’s compulsion. Unfortunately, even now that both the Queen and Lady Sian know of Lord Altimere’s plot, he may be too powerful for anything but a large number of other Fey, pooling their magical power, to bring to justice—and since getting Fey to act in concert is like herding cats, the Queen will need some time to cajole and persuade enough of her allies. Iin the meantime, Rebecca must be protected from Altimere—and from herself. She is determined to return home, which cannot yet be permitted. And if she cannot go home, she is even more determined to kill herself!
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Steve Miller has been, in no particular order, a reviewer—of music, of books and of typewriters—a reporter, an editor, a professional chess tournament director, a librarian, an editor, a sysop, an editor and a resource specialist for a statewide electronic bulletin board system. He and Sharon Lee married in 1980, operated The Dreams Garth Art Agency for several years, and now live in Maine, with four cats, more computer equipment than two normal people need, a lot of books and almost as much music.
Sharon Lee’s has worked as administrative aide to the Dean of the School of Social Work, University of Maryland Professional Schools, as well as at odd and odder jobs, the most memorable of which was delivering tractor trailers, though selling cider at the Baltimore City Sunday Farmer's Market was fun, too. On the odder side, she worked as an advertising copy writer, both in-house and freelance. In 1988, Sharon, Steve, the cats, some of the books, most of the records and both of the computers moved to Maine. And there they all still are, rumors of a divorce and of Steve's demise being wildly exaggerated
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Less character development, darker and more explicit than their previous works,
By
This review is from: Duainfey (Hardcover)
I am a huge fan of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller-- I have read all of their other books at least four times each.
This book, however, is different than the rest. To state it briefly, the innocent but willful main female character is tricked into being a sex slave of the main male character (and later, is used and abused by his acquaintances to further his political goals). I wasn't expecting this book to be so sexually focused. Normally their books focus more on character development in a sci-fi/fantasy way, where two people are drawn to each other gradually, and resist falling in love, while the reader sees it coming. This is a much darker and much more sexual novel, although not actually explicit in its descriptions. Still a very good book, but not what I was expecting, nor does it follow their usual "boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl are independently strong characters in their own right" pattern.
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Horror that creeps upon one,
By
This review is from: Duainfey (Hardcover)
What if you were shown the power to change your life? What if it were within your grasp? Would you take it, no matter the cost? These questions are posed by Duainfey, the first half of a dark fantasy duology by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller.
This book starts out like a typical Regency with a bit of a fantasy twist. If you're expecting a fantasy Regency with a few elves and sparkles and maybe a panpipe or two, this isn't the book for you. Rather than thinking of Regency romances, think of Faerie Ballads. Duainfey is about the use and abuse of power. Rebecca Beauvelley is nearly powerless to prevent an unwanted marriage. She's nearly powerless in her father's house, and her husband-to-be has shown that he intends to keep her powerless. But Altimere, an elder fey from across the border, shows her that she has the power to accept his invitation to go with him. And so she puts her trust in him, and goes across the border. Across the border in the court of the Queen of Fey, Meripen Vanglelauf is awakened betime from his healing sleep, and is bitterly aware that his love was killed in the land of men, by people intent on power over the fey. He is then sent on a quest to find out why the land and the wood are falling ill. He has come to hate men, and thinks much on their powers. Although Rebecca and Meripen Vanglelauf do not meet in this book, their stories, and their horrors, parallel one another. And make no mistake. This is a horror story. And it's the most hair-raising kind of horror --not things that go bump in the night, or bloody corpses, although both of those do exist in this book. Rather, it's the horror of the decision made hastily, the question not asked, the price too high, and the courage that might not be enough. And the horror creeps up, written as it is in Lee and Miller's clear, lovely prose. The horror has enough of a sexual content that I don't feel comfortable recommending this book to younger readers, unlike many Lee and Miller books. In the same way, I don't feel comfortable recommending A Clockwork Orange to younger readers. Both are very fine books, but they are books that should be read with eyes open. It's not really appropriate for younger teens. Older teens? I would tell them that it's a cautionary tale that pulls no punches. There is the potential that the second book in this pair, Longeye, may not be as much of a horror story as Duainfey. But there's also the potential for deeper horror. I do hope for a happy continuation for both Becca and Meripen, but I don't yet count on it.
23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Promising start, no ending, no plot. *spoilers*,
By
This review is from: Duainfey (Hardcover)
I read the sample chapters for Duainfey at the Baen website months ago, and enjoyed them enough that this went on my list of "to be read when it comes out." I saw it in the bookstore, but fortunately shied away from paying the hardcover price for it and got it in the September Webscription from Baen instead. I don't want to think about how mad I'd be if I'd paid hardcover price for this book.
The book gets two stars [revised to 3 stars, see below] because I did care about the characters and keep reading to see what happened to them. It only gets two stars because I didn't get to see anything very interesting happen to them. "THE END" comes at an arbitrary point where nothing much has changed, nothing has been resolved, and no questions have been answered. The two main characters, who are followed in alternating chapters, don't even meet by the end of the book! Duainfey, unfortunately, isn't a full book. It's an introduction to the next book, and it doesn't even end on a cliffhanger, it just cuts off. As other reviews have mentioned, Rebecca dodges a horrible marriage by going off with a fey gentleman. Then the story takes a steep dive into gratuitous sexual degradation, which starts out relatively mild and escalates into gang-rape by the end of the book. Rebecca is a supposedly "willful" woman whose willfulness seems to be simple impulsiveness with no actual self-determination. I kept hoping to see her start to develop some sort of goals or desires of her own, but she didn't. Instead of plotting escape when she's unhappy, she begs, and any resistance she offers seems more like a haphazard impulse than actual defiance. Regarding the other main character: through flashbacks, the reader is shown that Meripen is horribly traumatized by the torture and degradation he and his (now dead) lover suffered at the hands of humans eager to steal their magic. That's basically the only role he plays in this book, except to give a little background to Sian, who in the last page or two helps Rebecca win free from her (partially self-imposed) sexual slavery. (I'm not really sure why Sian gets involved, she just does.) He hates humans for what they did, until he finds out that there are humans living on his cousin's lands, and gains an inkling that they may actually be decent people. This doesn't seem like too much of a struggle, since the trees are willing to vouch for them. I suppose it might be counted as a small change, but one that I would anticipate at an early chapter-end, rather than at the end of the book. He doesn't get the chance to do anything with his inkling, or even turn it into a full change of opinion. In retrospect, it seems blatantly obvious that the only purpose of this book is to subject Rebecca to enough abuse at fey hands to make her damage and trauma equal to Meripen's, while letting the reader know how damaged and traumatized (at human hands) he is already. Once she's been sufficiently abused, the book ends, presumably leaving any actual plot to occur in the second book. It is possible to write duologies, trilogies and series where each book has a plot that wraps up enough questions to satisfy the reader while leaving enough loose ends to entice them into reading the next book. Just look at the books of Mercedes Lackey, Patricia Briggs or Holly Lisle for excellent examples of this. Or, as the authors have chosen to do with Duainfey and Longeye, you can take one long book, hack it in half and sell each half as "part of a duology" to make more money, with no care for whether the first book leaves the reader with the literary equivalent of blue balls. [Edit: I've learned a lot about the market in the past couple of years, enough to have a lot more sympathy for the authors and how little control they may have once a book goes into the publisher's hands. I haven't read Longeye, and I wouldn't suggest reading Duainfey without the sequel close to hand, but I'll reiterate here that I did care about what happened to the characters, and if you don't mind the sexual abuse in the content, you may well enjoy the two books together. If the book was simply bad or boring, I wouldn't have been disappointed enough by the ending to write this review.]
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
