When a witch is born, a doppelganger is created. For the witch to master her powers, the twin must be killed, but what happens when the doppelganger survives?
Mirage, a bounty hunter, lives by her wits and lethal fighting skills. She always gets her mark. But her new mission will take her into the shadowy world of witches, where her strength may be no match against magic.
Miryo is a witch who has just failed her initiation test. She now knows that there is someone in the world who looks like her, who is her: Mirage. To control her powers, Miryo has only one choice: to hunt the hunter and destroy her.

This book is a must have for any fantasy/urban fantasy reader. The setting has an old school fantasy feeling with a well worked out combination of new and old dialogue. The entire book is written in third person, fluidly switching between Miryo and Mirage throughout and delving into the world making you feel like you have already known about it forever avoiding long winded description that pulls a person right out of the story.
Each girl has a best friend who acts almost as the level headed side of them.
Each character in the book was well developed and given a very ‘3d’ feel. Even the minor characters had depth.
The plot has a strong complexity and twists and turns – enough to keep it from becoming shallow and predictable but not so much so that the reader will get lost.
Marie Brennan is a talented author capable of keeping a book on that perfect line of balance and I have to say that Warrior falls at or near the top of my list of top reads. There is nothing bad to say about this book.
I will definitely be picking it up to read over and over.
A+++ ( )

How would you react to learn you would be killed by your clone? A weird tale but interesting. ( )

So over the weekend I finished up a book I’ve been meaning to read for at least a year now. It was a very fun read, too: DOPPELGANGER by Marie Brennan.

The best part about waiting to read a book is this: the sequel’s already out, and I don’t have to wait for it to be published. ;)

Anyway, the book sounded interesting and had been recommended to me, so I bought it. And then I decided that, based on the back cover, I knew what was going to happen. So I delayed reading it. And delayed. When I did pick it up about a week ago, I had determined that I didn’t care if I knew what the ending would be, because I still wanted to read it, even if my hopes weren’t very high.

I was wrong.

Well, not entirely. I did still have a very close idea how the ending would work out, even if I got some very critical details wrong. (That was a nice change, actually. Not only is the way it’s written much better than the ending I had been expecting, but it’s nice to get a twist like that to an ending that you’ve been predicting.)

And I was also not wrong in my initial thought of “this looks like a fun book.” It is a fun book. Very much so. (Ooh, and there wasn’t any obligatory romance in it! Very nice change.)

I do recommend this one. It was a very enjoyable read. ( )

Doppelganger by Marie Brennan is the first novel in the Doppelganger series. Just so people don’t get confused, this same novel is also known as Warrior. Why the change…

My publisher wants them to have continued life; the reissue is timed for two months after the release of Midnight Never Come, to attract new readers from that book. The change in title comes about because they wanted to redesign these two to more obviously form a pair, the change in cover because everyone agrees Warrior and Witch (now Witch) has the much more arresting image.

I guess that makes sense, but it still doesn’t effect the story, so let’s get back to what’s really important. The premise of the story is really original. Basically, whenever a witch is born, the infant goes through a ceremony to help contain her magic so it doesn’t consume her. During this ritual, a doppelganger is born and usually killed. Why you ask…because if the doppelganger survives, then the witch will not be able to control her magic when she comes of age. For Miryo, this becomes an issue when it’s revealed her doppelganger, Mirage, was never killed and now she must go and do the deed herself. She’s not allowed to do magic and it must be by her hand. Sounds relative simple, right? What Miryo doesn’t know is that Mirage has been trained as a Hunter, a mercenary, who is considered one of the best.

I love reading fantasy novels and this new twist to a classic tale of witches and magic is interesting. The story is told by both Miryo and Mirage and it’s done really well. I’m not a fan of flashbacks or novels that jump around a lot, but Brennan breaks each point of view into chapters and she clearly marks at the beginning who is speaking. Not only does this keep me from being confused, but she doesn’t switch POVs in mid thought or while one is thinking of something. She finishes the scene and leaves you with a cliffhanger or something to think about while you read to see what the other twin is doing. This scored big points for me.

The dual storytelling doesn’t last for the whole book, because eventually Miryo and Mirage meet up. When they do, they realize that they have more in common, and not in common, then they thought they would. Miryo can’t kill Mirage. I mean, who would be able to look themselves in the eye and kill their mirror image. Especially a person who wasn’t trained to do so. The struggle Miryo and Mirage go through in order to understand the reasoning behind the need for the doppelganger to be destroyed takes the strengths from both of them and creates a really good story. Once the twins know what they need to do, and receive the answers they need, they go and do it. I’ve read a lot of books that will drag out scenes and conflicts in order to fill pages and Brennan didn’t have to do this. She had a great story being told by great characters and she didn’t need to throw in obstacles to keep a reader interested.

Overall, this was a really good novel and I’m glad my cousin recommended it. I’m definitely going to go out and add this novel (and the second one) to my personal collection. Marie Brennan was a new author for me and I can’t wait to go out and find more of her novels.

http://www.literaryescapism.com/2008/... ( )

When a witch is born a doppelganger is created. Usually this doppleganger is killed but Miryo's wasn't. Her doppelganger lives as Mirage, a bounty hunter of some skill. Miryo finds out that she has this doppelganger and that in order to come fully into her own power she has to kill Mirage.

It's an interesting concept and fun read. I enjoyed it. ( )