This is an omnibus reprint of Diane Duane's first two titles in this series, The Door into Fire and The Door into Shadow. In The Door into Fire, Herewiss, Prince of the Brightwood, is the only man in centuries to possess the Power of the Flame, but he cannot control it. Even though he cannot control the Power of the Flame, he does have a talent for sorcery and with the help of Sunspark, a fire elemental, he is able to free his best friend Freelorn, the Prince of Arlen. Now Herewiss must make a choice. Does he go with his best friend to aide him in his fight to regain his kingdom or does he follow Sunspark to an ancient castle where there are 'doors' that lead to other worlds? Places that he can go to earn to use the Power of the Flame. Dare he walk through the door into fire? In The Door into Shadow, we are at a time that the royal magics are failing. The Reaver armies are massing and with them is the Shadow-destroyer off all that is good in the Goddess's creation. Between them and humanity stand a few brave souls-Herewiss, the first man in decades to have the Power of the Flame; Freelorn, the prince of Arlen; Sunspark, a fire elemental; Eftgan, the warrior queen of Darthen; and Segnbora, sorceress and swordwoman who speaks with the tongue of dragons. Can they overcome their own past and differences to unite in this fight, or do they fall prey to doubt and distrust which leads to the door into shadow?
Diane Duane was born in New York City -- a descendant of New York's first mayor -- and worked there as a psychiatric nurse before leaving the profession for the only one she loved better, the business of writing. Since the publication of her first novel in 1981, she's written fifty more, not to mention numerous short stories, comics, computer games and screenplays for TV and film, and has picked up the occasional award here and there. (She has also worked with Star Trek in more media than anyone else alive.)
Right now she's probably best known for her "Young Wizards" series of young adult fantasy novels, featuring the New York-based wizards Kit Rodriguez and Nita Callahan -- in business for twenty-five years now, their most recent adventure being described in the ninth YW novel, "A Wizard of Mars" (just released in paperback).
DD shares a two hundred-year-old cottage in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland with her husband, the Belfast-born novelist and screenwriter Peter Morwood, a laid-back white cat named Goodman, and various overworked computers... an odd but congenial environment for the staging of epic battles between good and evil and the leisurely pursuit of total galactic domination. (And a lot of ethnic cooking: her own favorite foods come from the cuisines of central Europe and the Mediterranean.) In her spare time she gardens (weeding, mostly), studies German and Italian, listens to shortwave and satellite radio, and dabbles in astronomy, computer graphics, iaido, amateur cartography, and desktop publishing ... while also trying to figure out how to make more spare time.
Her favorite color is blue, her favorite food is a weird kind of Swiss scrambled-potato dish called maluns, she was born in a Year of the Dragon, and her sign is "Runway 24 Left, Hold For Clearance."
