Ithanalin's Restoration (Ethshar) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Lawrence Watt-Evans (Author) "The room was quietly comfortable, and not at all like the popular image of a wizard's workshop..." (more)
Key Phrases: animation spell, animated furniture, missing couch, Steep Street, Wizard Street, Lady Nuvielle (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In contrast to today's elaborate fantasy sagas, Watt-Evans's latest installment in his Ethshar series (Night of Madness; The Misenchanted Sword) provides a simple, complete story. Despite several years of study, Kilisha, an aspiring young apprentice wizard, has much to learn. After gathering ingredients for a lesson, she returns home to find her master, Ithanalin the Wise, transformed into a statue. A tax collector interrupted Ithanalin while working on a spell, a magic mirror tells her, with the result that the wizard's soul has been distributed among the various household objects. "The dish had run away with the spoon" is literally the case here, as all the furnishings have become animated and escaped out the door. In her efforts to track down the runaway objects and restore her petrified master to his former self, a quest that will eventually take her to the Overlord of Ethshar's fortress, Kilisha first tries to involve the Wizards' Guild but ultimately must rely on the few spells she knows and her master's spell book-as well as her own imagination, initiative and ingenuity. Excellent pacing and na‹ve charm make this good-natured fantasy especially suitable for teens.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
When the wizard Ithanalin falls afoul of one of his own spells, becoming an inanimate object and animating all his furniture instead, his apprentice, Kilisha, must find a way to reverse the spell and restore her master. First, however, she must round up the errant chairs, tables, and other pieces that have scattered throughout the magical city of Ethshar. Watt-Evans returns to his popular Ethshar series (Night of Madness; The Spell of the Black Dagger) for another dose of ebullient fantasy featuring sympathetic characters, fantastic sorceries, and a fairytale plot. For most libraries, particularly where the series is in demand.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (October 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765340550
• ISBN-13: 978-0765340559
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #640,802 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 8 in The Legends of Ethshar Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To Accept Responsibility, December 3, 2002

By	Arthur W. Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ithanalin's Restoration (Ethshar) (Hardcover)

Ithanalin's Restoration (2002) is the eighth Ethshar novel, but the chronology is more complicated. This novel actually occurs during the latter part of Spell of the Black Dagger and stands in contrast to it.

This story is a cautionary tale, taking place in Ethshar of the Rocks. It demonstrates how wizardry is a dangerous business. It even shows why a wizard should never be allowed to cook the family dinner.

Kilisha of Eastgate is the apprentice of Ithanalin the Wise. The first impression of most people is that she is very ordinary. Most of the time she doesn't even wear her apprentice robes, but she is quite capable of proving that she is a wizard's apprentice. She is talented, but much too impulsive.

After a hard day trying to get the blood of a gray cat, she comes home to find the parlor empty of furniture, but containing one deanimated wizard, Ithanalin. The mirror informs her that he tripped over a spriggan and spilled an animating potion all over the room, thereby losing portions of his persona to the furnishings and door latch and, of course, the spriggan. Kilisha determines that Javan's Restorative spell can reanimate her master, but only if all the pieces of his persona are present. Naturally, all the furniture, and the spriggan, have run away.

Kilisha tries to get help from the Guild, but they are preoccupied with the events in Ethshar of the Sands. She then undertakes the task of recovering the furniture, and spriggan, collecting the proper ingredients, and learning Javan's Restorative on her own. She does have help from Ithanalin's family, the neighbors, her family, and Kelder, the tax agent who was the proximate cause of the accident. She employs a number of magical ploys to find and take back the furniture, including a death-defying dive off the Fortress walls.

This novel stars a young woman who accepts responsibility for restoring her master, facing and solving problem after problem. She is plagued by her impulsiveness, but takes steps to correct that problem also. By the end of the story, she has shown a strength of character and resourcefulness of which even she wasn't aware.

In many ways, this is a typical Ethshar story. The plots and problems vary, but the hero/heroine perseveres through everything that faces him/her. Spell of the Black Dagger was an exception in that the story was not told from the point of view of the heroine; of course, that gimmick displeased a lot of his fans.

In this novel, the heroine is the center of the story and is everything that a fan could want ... except ravishing beautiful, but Kelder might not agree. Recommended to all Ethshar fans and anyone who likes light fantasy adventure with magical touches and dashes of humor.

-Arthur W. Jordin

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pleasant light fantasy, January 30, 2003

By	Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ithanalin's Restoration (Ethshar) (Hardcover)

_Ithanalin's Restoration_ is Lawrence Watt-Evans's latest Ethshar novel. (Of late he has been alternating his more serious, and longer, Dragon novels with his generally light-hearted Ethshar fantasies.) The main character is Kilisha, the 17 year old apprentice to Master Wizard Ithanalin. One of Ithanalin's spells gets disrupted by a mischievous spriggan, with the unwitting help of a tax-collector, and Ithanalin's "essence" ends up distributed among various objects, including several pieces of furniture. The spooked tax-collector leaves the door open, and the furniture, having legs, escapes. It falls to Kilisha to track down the escaped furniture and to learn the spell that can restore the pieces of Ithanalin from the pieces of furniture to his inanimate body. Her job is made more complicated because the more senior wizards in the town are unable to help her, as they are concerned with a political crisis: a revolt in another town that may spread.

The story is quite fun, a fast and always enjoyable read, with plenty of clever sequences arising from the central situation and the use of limited wizardly magic (such as Kilisha's way of using a love spell to lure back an escaped rug). Also noteworthy is the basic decency and commonsense of the various characters in the book. This is, I think,a particular characteristic of most of Watt-Evans's work -- his characters are pretty normal people, for the most part, and basically act like decent ordinary people we know, with to be sure the occasional foible. To take just one example from this book, we are introduced to the city's overlord, after a scene setting him up to be a lazy fop (semi-evil overlord model 3B, or something). It turns out, though, that he's basically a nice guy, who maybe gets a bit tired of long meetings. I do like this aspect of LWE's stories -- which is present in most of them, though you do get some slightly more extreme characters in for example the Dragon books.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent story!, December 4, 2002

By	Kurt A. Johnson (Marseilles, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ithanalin's Restoration (Ethshar) (Hardcover)

Kilisha is entering the final year of her apprenticeship to Ithanalin the Wise, one of the foremost wizards of Ethshar of the Rocks. However, when a freak accident disrupts his spell casting, Ithanalin's spirit is transferred to his parlor furniture, which animates and flees out into the city. To restore her master, Kilisha needs these items back. How hard can it be to collect a group of uncooperative runaway furniture? You'd be surprised...and amused!

This is the eighth Ethshar book by Lawrence Watt-Evans, and is just as good as any of the others; which is to say, excellent! Funny in the way that With A Single Spell was, this book is also an excellent and exciting read. I enjoyed the situations and the wonderful magic, but more than anything I liked the characters, especially the strong female characters, particularly Kilisha (the heroine of the story). This is an excellent story, one that I highly recommend to everyone!