18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete, at long last!, February 19, 2005
I can say without hesitation that my all-time favorite Andre Norton title is "Ciara's Song". Given that I have 105 Norton books on my shelves, I've read nearly everything she's done.
I've lost count of the number of times I've read "Ciara's Song" over the years since it came out in 1998. I fell in love with the warm, believable characters: Ciara and Trovagh, his father Lord Tarnoor, also Aisling and Keelan, the grandchildren of Ciara and Trovagh. And, of course, a big, 35-pound telepathic cat named Wind Dancer, the product of a union between a house cat and something mysterious she encountered up in the hills. I have a very vivid mental picture of Aiskeep and the valley it guards, along with its people.
In fact, I had only one complaint about "Ciara's Song": it ended too abruptly. Aisling, being of the Old Blood, had inherited certain powers which she didn't know how to control. Her, and Keelan's, older brother Kirion wanted the power for himself, but there was one catch: whereas it tends to manifest itself readily in girls and women to one degree or another, it rarely manifests itself in boys and men. So, after combing through many books of nearly forgotten lore, Kirion devised an evil way to steal power from those who had it, usually to their destruction. Aisling would be a particularly tempting victim, if only he could catch her.
So, the book ended with her fleeing into the neighboring land of Escore, with Wind Dancer to protect her along the way. There she would find people to help her control her gift. Kirion, frustrated by a mountain blizzard, had no choice but to turn back.
And there it remained for seven years. I'd read and reread the book, always wondering when Norton would finish the tale.
Now, it's quite rare for me to buy a book in hardcover, but "The Duke's Ballad" was definitely worth the price. Waiting another year or two for the paperback would have been unbearable. I don't consider it a sequel so much as the long-delayed conclusion to a single story. They could easily form a single volume.
"The Duke's Ballad" picks up three years after the end of "Ciara's Song". Aisling has learned, from the Adept Hilarion, just about everything she reasonably can without benefit of practice. She and Wind Dancer are both homesick. Then there's the problem of her evil brother Kirion and his puppet, the Duke Shastro of Karsten. Someone has to stop them before they completely ruin the country, plunging it into yet another disastrous war with its northern neighbor Estcarp. As we learned in "Ciara's Song", Karsten is a land plagued with instability, with clans warring against each other in blood feuds, endlessly wrestling to put one of their own onto the ducal throne.
And then there's the problem of those people who keep disappearing -- to feed Kirion's power lust, or Duke Shastro's more conventional, but perverted, appetites.
With a geas laid upon her, a sort of magical compulsion, Aisling returns to her homeland and meets up with Keelan and another young man, Hadrann ("Rann") of Aranskeep, who has his own reasons to fight Kirion and Shastro. It will not be easy. Aisling has to be very discreet in the use of her power, or Kirion will capture and kill her, and all will be lost. He already knows she's in the country, and his spies abound.
Of course, we get to meet all of our old friends in Aiskeep, a very welcome reunion. But much of the action takes place at the ducal palace in Kars, the capital city. There's plenty of intrigue to go around as the protagonists seek their enemies' downfall. Indeed, just about the time it all starts to wear a little thin, our heroes get away from the city for a bit of a breather -- but nothing ever goes according to plan.
Of the two main villains, Duke Shastro is by far the more complex of the two. Kirion is just plain evil, and utterly beyond redemption. But what of the Duke? He's a tormented soul, with ugly, nasty appetites, true -- but he can also be very generous to his friends, including Aisling (in disguise). Not only that, but he likes cats. Is there some way Aisling can save him when the inevitable showdown comes? Only time will tell.
Just as the title "Ciara's Song" isn't explained until the very end of the book, so it is with "The Duke's Ballad".
Of course, given Andre Norton's extremely advanced age (she was born in 1912), most of her recent works have been collaborations. It is probably not a coincidence that "Ciara's Song" and "The Duke's Ballad", along with "The Key of the Keplian" (also set in Karsten and Escore) and the two latest "Beast Master" novels, have all been co-authored with Lyn McConchie, and most of these also rank in the top ten of my list of Norton favorites.
In fact, based on what I've learned over the past couple of years, I suspect that McConchie is doing most or all of the writing, merely borrowing from Norton's universe with her blessing. That's fine with me. I'm looking forward to anything else she writes or co-authors, especially in the "Ciara/Aisling" story line.
While "The Duke's Ballad" fairly neatly ties the ends of the story together, there is always room for sequels. I'm hoping more will be coming.
In the meantime, I will continue to read "Ciara's Song" and "The Duke's Ballad" over and over, savoring every word.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Save your time, March 5, 2005
I've read all of the Witch World books, including Ciara's Song, and was looking forward to the finish of the story about Ciara's grandchildren. What a disappointment! The entire story is flat and uninteresting for the most part, and the few points that could have been fascinating were not well-developed, e.g. Aisling's relationship with Shastro, and the development of her romantic relationship with 'Rann. Kirion is two-dimensional-totally evil without any qualities the reader might want to explore, and even though he is her brother, Aisling writes him off in the beginning of the story- there is never any real struggle with having to destroy a sibling.
There are also two or three almost inexplicable chapters in the middle of the book that really don't advance the plot at all- regarding the winter rescue mission at Aiskeep. Quite a lot of time and elaborate writing was done to take us through that, but I kept asking myself- What in the world did that have to do with anything that happened before or after? It was like reading: "What I did on my winter vacation".
Many of the difficulties that the main characters must surmount are treated too superficially, so one gets the feeling of having a 'taste' but not being satisfied by the full feast that Witch World should be.
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