The Aware (Isles of Glory) (original 2003; edition 2005)

Great adventure fantasy. I loved the Isles world as a background, and Blaze is a wonderful unwilling heroine. I usually have problems with female main characters in fantasy, but I love Blaze. ( )

The first of a series and interesting but somehow lacking.

Blaze is a halfbreed and has little or no rights on the islands that make up the nation that she lives on. Blaze has an awareness of magic and can tell if it's magic on the side of good or evil. The main leaders of the islands are the Keepers who are using her for her skills, promising her eventual citizenship.

Her current mission is to find a missing woman. A royal woman, a woman who is supposed to bring more stability to an area with her marriage, however events get in the way of this mission and her life is threatened.

It's not a bad read and the framing device is interesting and I wouldn't mind reading more in the series, however it has some places where the story lags and becomes a bit ponderous. ( )

Now this is the sort of book I should like - fantasy, strong world creation, bit of magic, bit of sword play, strong female protagonist, not badly written. But I couldn't get into it and found myself skimming. Not sure why. Blaze Halfbreed wants citizenship and has to do what the Keepers want in order to get it. She's looking for a Cirkasian (caucasian?) slave and gets into all sorts of trouble on Gortham Spit. First of a trilogy. I'm not going to read the others, but feel a bit sad about it. I wanted to like this more. ( )