The Rival : The Third Book of the Fey

Rating:
Summary: Well written,well plotted, engrossing, unpredictable.
Review: Complex, well characterised and left me wanting the next installment now. My only criticism is that there are constant, short explanations of events covered in previous books which I found very annoying. I wondered about the point of them - if you hadn't read the previous two books, then none of the explanations would have been adequate. If you had read them, the explanations are redundant. Other than that, an excellent investment.

Rating:
Summary: great series
Review: I love this series and only wish it was possible to get the 4th book without paying an arm and a leg. Still I read them all and skipped the 4th. It is an excellant well thought out book with interesting characters and a completely captivating world. The characters are real people with multi dimensions. They react like real people and die like real people. KK Rusch has created a believable world with adult themes and lets not forget the great and original magic. The followup black king and black queen are great too.

Rating:
Summary: great series
Review: I love this series and only wish it was possible to get the 4th book without paying an arm and a leg. Still I read them all and skipped the 4th. It is an excellant well thought out book with interesting characters and a completely captivating world. The characters are real people with multi dimensions. They react like real people and die like real people. KK Rusch has created a believable world with adult themes and lets not forget the great and original magic. The followup black king and black queen are great too.

Rating:
Summary: Good third chapter of the story of the Fey and Blue Island
Review: I was surprised that this wasn't the end of the story, but I realized half-way through that this story has a long way to go. I poured through the book. A good read with interesting plot twists.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic, enthralling series!
Review: The Fey series is such a good read! What first got me hooked on fantasy stories and faeries is A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton (BEST book ever). My fave characters in this series are Jewel, Nicholas, Arianna, Gift, and Coulter. The love between Jewel and Nicholas, and (my guess is) between Arianna and Coulter is really poignant. The only reason that I didn't rate this series a five is 'cause the author mercilessly killed off several of the characters I enjoyed--Solanda, Burden, and especially Jewel. Sob, sob. I am also hunting up and down for the 4th book, THE RESISTANCE. I wish the publisher would just continue to print it. Happy reading!

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic, enthralling series!
Review: The Fey series is such a good read! What first got me hooked on fantasy stories and faeries is A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton (BEST book ever). My fave characters in this series are Jewel, Nicholas, Arianna, Gift, and Coulter. The love between Jewel and Nicholas, and (my guess is) between Arianna and Coulter is really poignant. The only reason that I didn't rate this series a five is 'cause the author mercilessly killed off several of the characters I enjoyed--Solanda, Burden, and especially Jewel. Sob, sob. I am also hunting up and down for the 4th book, THE RESISTANCE. I wish the publisher would just continue to print it. Happy reading!

Rating:
Summary: Pure magick
Review: This writer really is the best. Since Tolkien I've never read a serie like The Fey. What a beautiful plots, twists and turnings. The book is full of surprises and well plotted. I can't stop and have to get the next two books. Really marvelous Kristine. Your serie belongs to the top 3 in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Third Book of the Fey brings invasion and depth the series.
Review: Writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch never made it clear just how many books she was planning to write when she began her series 'The Fey' in 1995. However, since, in Tolkeinesque fashion, such series have a tendency to end up as trilogies, many readers assumed that the third book, The Rival, would be the last. By the end of the third book, however, it was apparent that that would not be the case.

Rusch brings back many of her old characters, while introducing several new ones, whose development in no way suffers because of the already existing pantheon of heroes. With the introduction of Rugad, a conquering warlord from the mainland, the fragile peace of Blue Island (the setting for the past two books) is threatened. The heroes who established this armistice in the preceding two books now must resist Rugad's invasion, or have the Blue Isle taken by him for the Fey.

As mundane as this plot sounds, Rusch continues to demonstrate her ability for believable unpredictability. Throughout the series, major junctures are only obvious in retrospect, the consequences thereof generally realistically far-reaching but unobtrusive until they manifest themselves later in the series. This ubiquitous sense or foreboding keeps the reader constantly watching for the inevitable eruption of action.

Rusch mixes magic and personal interactions in just the right ratio to create a set of opposing worlds -- that of the Fey, where magic is an everyday piece of life and completely secular -- and that of the Blue Islanders, where magic has become so rare and awesome that it is only found, highly ritualized, in the annals of the Tabernacle, their highest religious authority. This dichotomy of belief systems creates a constant conflict of values, where the reader is agreeably hard-pressed to determine which is 'right.' Through her firm sense of narrative and placement of events, Rusch constructs a believable and intriguing world of magic and intrigue.

Rusch's The Rival stands out from her other two books in the series in that it offers more character devlopment and less history: we have already been familiarized with the history we need to know, so now more time is given to the essential fleshing out of the characters, a trait which serves the book well. Although the book can only be truly judged in the context of the series, it stands out from the series as a combined result of the readers' familiarity with the characters and Rusch's continuing growth as an author