Mistress of the Catacombs (Lord of the Isles, Book 4) [Hardcover]

David Drake (Author)

Book Description

Series: Lord of the Isles | Publication Date: September 19, 2001

For the first time in a thousand years, the Kingdom of the Isles has a government and a real ruler: Prince Garric of Haft. The enemies joining against him intend to destroy not only the kingdom but humankind as well.

The rebels gathering in the West outnumber the royal army and the magic they wield can strike into the heart of the palace itself, but far greater dangers lie behind those. On the far fringes of the Isles, ancient powers ready themselves for a titanic struggle in which human beings are mere pawns--or fodder!

Reptilian and insect monsters from out of the ages march on the kingdom, commanded by wizards no longer human or never human at all. If unchecked, their ravening slaughter will sweep over the Isles as destructively as a flood of lava. Garric, ripped from his time and body, must make new allies if he and his kingdom are to survive.

His sister Sharina struggles with the chaos threatening the kingdom as swords and wizardry both gather to bring it down.

Their friend Cashel, thrown into a place not of his world, faces each succeeding challenge with the calm certainty that he will overcome it or die, and that nothing yet has been able to kill him.

And while her comrades strive in their own fashions, Ilna studies a pattern more complex than perhaps than even she and the skills she learned in Hell can master. If she fail, humanity will never escape the web being woven for it.

Watching them all from the blackness of a tomb walled off in time and space, the Mistress waits...

And her fangs drip poison!

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In the fourth volume of Lord of the Isles, Prince Garric of Haft, the reluctant hero now ruling the Kingdom of the Isles as best he can, has solved some of his logistical and financial problems. Unfortunately, much of his opposition comes from immaterial forces, as rogue wizards, some nonhuman, cast spells right and left. Various bestial hordes swarm in all quarters, and though the Mistress of the Catacombs remains off-stage, the mere fact that she exists raises the levels of threat to the realm and tension in the narrative. Garric isn't fighting alone, of course; sister Sharina, ghost-adviser Cashel, and student of Hell's magic Ilna guard his flanks and back. The book doesn't escape the problem, inherent to its place in the saga, of dividing its considerable length between filling in backstory and advancing the plots, counterplots, and subplots. That adversely affects pacing but not world building, characterization, and systems of magic, which are all so well conceived that the saga continues to be Drake's most ambitious work to date. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Unlike most modern fantasy, David Drake's Lord of the Isles is an epic with the texture of the legends of yore, with rousing action and characters to cheer for."-Terry Goodkind

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (September 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312873875
• ISBN-13: 978-0312873875
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,887,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The Army took David Drake from Duke Law School and sent him on a motorized tour of Viet Nam and Cambodia with the 11th Cav, the Blackhorse. He learned new skills, saw interesting sights, and met exotic people who hadn't run fast enough to get away.

Dave returned to become Chapel Hill's Assistant Town Attorney and to try to put his life back together through fiction making sense of his Army experiences.

Dave describes war from where he saw it: the loader's hatch of a tank in Cambodia. His military experience, combined with his formal education in history and Latin, has made him one of the foremost writers of realistic action SF and fantasy. His bestselling Hammer's Slammers series is credited with creating the genre of modern Military SF. He often wishes he had a less interesting background.

Dave lives with his family in rural North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting, but . . ., October 21, 2001

By 

bookelf (Philadelphia PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mistress of the Catacombs (Lord of the Isles, Book 4) (Hardcover)

I've read the entire Lord of the Isles series, and although each book is interesting, as a whole, the series is just repetitive. Although the characters get into many interesting adventures, and this book especially had some unusual twists, in general the plot stays the same for book after book after book . . . I agree with many of the other reviewers; the series would be a lot more likely to go somewhere if he just kept the characters together for a while. It would also help to explore the relationships between them a little more. It's slightly difficult to really see how Cashel feels about his sister Ilna, for example, when they only spend a day in every year together, and the rest of the time they're in different parallel universes. Also, some of the characters are just too perfect - Garric, Liane and Sharina don't seem to have any flaws between them. Even Cashel, although he is slightly slow-witted, seems too good to be true. Ilna is the character who most catches my attention, because, even though her powers are inhuman, she seems the most like a real person of any of them . . . anyway, I know that was a lot of criticism, but despite that, these books are worth reading; they're just not the best things you'll ever come across. They're a great diversion, though, and hopefully the plot will pick up pace in future volumes. Anyway, I'll keep reading, just to see what happens to Ilna; her chapters are always gripping, even if the rest of the story lags, and her romance with Chalcus is the best-developed inter-character relationship in the series.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lord of the Isles No. 4, September 14, 2001

By 

Mark Paulk (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mistress of the Catacombs (Lord of the Isles, Book 4) (Hardcover)

David Drake is on my list of authors "to buy on publication, hard or soft cover," so in general I think highly of him. Some of his books I have not cared for, but his military SF is classic. In recent years Drake has started two series that I find very impressive: Lord of the Isles and Lt Leary (also the Belisarius series with Eric Flint). The two Lt Leary books are "space fantasy" (one of the things that bothers me about Drake is that his science is pretty dreadful for SF); the Lord of the Isles series is heroic fantasy. With this installment, however, I found myself asking whether Drake really knows where he's going. These are fairly massive books, yet in terms of plot it's starting to feel like he's falling into "Robert Jordan syndrome." We're not yet to the point where I'd say this is another series that wouldn't die, yet the feel of this book was very similar to the previous books: the four main characters split off at the beginning when dragged into attacking a particular problem, address some aspect of it, and join together at the end. At this point in the series you might expect some problems to be ones that combinations of the main characters would attack. I still like these books a great deal (if you haven't read any of them yet, start with Lord of the Isles!), but I'm getting concerned about the direction of the series. Drake is usually meticulous in his plots, so it's quite possible this will all come together in the next book or so. Still recommended, but with a caution for future books in the series.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More of the same, October 8, 2001

By 

William C. Garthright (Lincoln, NE United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mistress of the Catacombs (Lord of the Isles, Book 4) (Hardcover)

This is a very entertaining fantasy series, though you need to start with the first volume, Lord of the Isles, because it's pretty much all one story. It will catch your interest immediately, and you'll care about the main characters right from the start. (These books are not what I'd normally expect from David Drake, who usually writes military SF with an emphasis on blood and guts.)

The first volume is the best, but this one is just as good as the others. In fact, it's almost identical to the others. Sadly, each new volume is nearly indistinguishable from the rest. First, the characters are widely separated in time and/or space, they have their individual adventures as they struggle to return, and then they're reunited for the ending.

I keep hoping that the next volume will keep them together for the immense - and interesting - work of building and maintaining the kingdom, but it never happens. Frankly, the same story told in every volume is getting a bit old.

Another reviewer mentioned the "Robert Jordan syndrome." Like Jordan, has Drake realized that he can keep fans perpetually buying new books in a popular series by just never going anywhere with the story? Is this just a way to extend the series as long as possible, or doesn't he know where he wants to go next?

I'm still giving this 4 stars, because I love the characters and I guess because I really loved the first couple of volumes. But I'm very disappointed with this book; it's certainly not bad but it's nearly identical to the previous two. I can't say you'd miss anything if you just skipped it and waited until (if) Drake decides to go on with the story in some future volume.