Book Review: This Septer’d Isle by Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis

The Doubled Edge, Book 1

How to begin describing a tale in which one of the most fearsome riders in the Wild Hunt turns into…a baby sitter? I should first warn you that this is a collaboration between Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis. I don’t really know anything about Gellis, I am sure I could look her up, but so can you. The reason I warn is that Lackey seems to have the same affect on readers as George W. has on voters. You either love or you hate. There really isn’t any middle ground.

This is a story of King Henry the VIII’s bastard son FitzRoy, the Seleighe court elves that try to protect him and the Unseleigh court that wants him dead. All in all it’s a nice fantasy read with enough historical fact to keep the mind entertained. PLEASE do not read this if you are expecting historical accuracy. Read a text book. This is a fantasy read. The fact that they get castle names right is good enough for me.

The premise of the story is that the Seleighe court gets a vision of a fork in the future. There is death and pain for the mortals on one side (Inquisition) and on the other the future looks very bright. The only way to keep it that way is to protect one small redheaded child. Denoriel is just the fae for the job. Even if he doesn’t want it.

I really enjoyed reading about the lengths Denoriel had to go through to get close and stay close to FitzRoy. A lot of times authors just throw magic around to solve everything. Don’t get me wrong, magic is tossed, but they at least acknowledge that sometimes you need to have a legit reason to be where you are.

There are a huge slew of characters you should have heard about before: Queen Catherine, Princess Mary, the Boelyn’s, His Grace Norfolk, to name just a few. They come and go as they should. You gleam insight into how the world was back then, and who’s to say that in jolly ole England there weren’t evil fae causing mischief and mayhem?