Standalone Group Read - January - Stranger at the Wedding / Sorcerer's Ward by Barbara Hambly

Kyra was preparing for her final wizard test before the Council. But suddenly, something was twisting her magic, weaving sinister portents of doom into even the simplest of her spells. Then she knew for certain that her young sister Alix was soon to marry--and soon to die. And so she journeyed back to the family who had disowned her. To save her sister, Kyra would have to face down her father's rage, stand firm against the venomous rivalries of her family's enemies, and confront the Inquisition. Then she must defeat a still deadlier foe--if only she could find it!

Stranger at the Wedding is a fantasy of manners with a female wizard protagonist- many reviewers seem to compare it to Georgette Heyer, whom I've not read, but that might give some idea of the tone.

There are other books set in the same world with other characters in which the protagonist is a minor character (The Windrose Chronicles trilogy), but I've been assured this story stands alone- the others are about a woman from Earth crossing over into the fantasy world and this one seems to take place entirely within it. I've been meaning to give Hambly a try for years so I'm looking forward to this one!

Ooh - is this a group read? I'll join in; I love that book.

I'm going to finally try Barbara Hambly with you, but not technically with the group read as I'll be reading the first Darwath book instead, another portal fantasy (but not related to the Windrose books).

I've read one Barbara Hambly, and I very much didn't like it, so I won't join it with this one. It was also about a female wizard, but I have no idea if it's in the same world. The cover looks familiar, maybe it was this one? I remember the writing style annoying me a lot.

Looked it up, and it WAS this one. From my review, it seems I zoned out on the extensive descriptions of non-essential stuff. I'm curious to see if anyone else has the same problem...

Oh, read this last year and enjoyed it a great deal!

>2 humouress: Yep, it's a group read! Please feel free to join in :)

>3 imyril: Hmm, I think I have the Darwath books around somewhere too, or I've seen them at the library-

>4 zjakkelien: Hmm, I've bounced off Hambly before too- I tried this one before and The Ladies of Mandrigyn but didn't make it far in either on my first attempt. I'm hoping the group read will get me over the hump so to speak because I think I'll like this one when I get into it from what I've heard, but starting it again I can see what you mean, and I'm also remembering that one of the things that put me off was that there's the very interesting prologue where all of Kyra's spells go awry, but then the first chapter skips quite a bit ahead with little explanation.

>5 Marissa_Doyle: I'd like to hear your thoughts!

>6 sandstone78: Looking back on my comments on it when I read it last summer, I found this; Stranger at the Wedding was great fun. Hambly is one of the best fantasy authors I've come across for depicting evil, and this story was no exception. I really liked Kyra, prickles and all, and the fact that there were real obstacles to her relationship with Spens, with nary a Huge Romantic Misunderstanding in sight.

I agree that the transition between the prologue and the first chapter was not smooth, but I think she did it just because the intervening time (her journey) simply wasn't relevant to the story itself and would have dragged down the pacing.

I truly enjoyed this book, but surely I would have come into it with a trusting outlook, given I've liked many Hambly titles throughout her career. The descriptions did not trouble me, nor I thought, slow the story - Hambly's a bit of a stylist, with a lyric phrase I'd associate with Pat McKillip's work, and Guy Kay's. And the story itself was chilling, humorous, fun, and in no way predictable. As ever Hambly's presentation of women is never vacuous - they are all people, all solid characters, it's a trademark of hers, and too rare for its day.

I just finished this book. My review (Spoiler-tagged) is here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/581057889?book_show_action=false

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I wish more heroines in fantasy were like the ones Hambly writes.

It's picking up a bit for me, I think the turning point was making it through the dinner scene. I still would have liked to have seen the connection between "all of my spells are going wrong and I don't know why" to "I'm here for the wedding," though, at this point- maybe it will come out later- I have no idea how Kyra made that conclusion. At the end of Chapter 1 in fact, she reflects that she isn't sure why she came, and I had to say that I didn't know either!

I'm enjoying the detail with which Hambly has built her world, it's nice and it makes it feel much less generic than a not-England mannered romance mashed up with wizards oppressed by the church could end up (though I'm sure also that those tropes are more common today than when this book was written, at least the mannered fantasy romances seem to be.)

I'm not sure whether or not I like Kyra yet, as I don't tend to get on with the type of characters that have a running mean internal commentary on everyone they meet, but I am certainly interested to see what happens to her, so liking isn't necessarily a prerequisite here. I'm really appreciating that Hambly isn't playing Alix as the vapid, worthless, mean pretty girl, though, which it would have been so easy to fall into the trope of doing.

>8 JannyWurts: It's still rare! But at the same time, as we've touched on before, I think it's overlooked how many authors have been writing women as people for decades now, and that gets lost in the disappointment and disgruntlement of people who aren't doing it now (see here for one example).

I read an interesting post by Eleanor Arnason on this topic this week, about how entire generations of diverse authors of the past, women and otherwise, are pretty much disappeared and forgotten- look at how many of even the big, important award-winning books by women aren't available in the ebook in the US: no The Left Hand of Darkness (and a ton of Le Guin's other backlist beyond Earthsea is also missing), no Cyteen (lots of Cherryh's backlist missing too), no sign of Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen, no Dreamsnake (only available through Book View Cafe directly), no Joanna Russ at all. If such even such appreciated works by huge, prominent authors have been allowed to become obscure due to unavailability, whither the midlist like Hambly and even less promoted authors, especially those who have passed away and are no longer here to fight for their work or self-publish themselves or become so disgusted with the process that they want nothing to do with?

Sometimes that 'unavailability' is due to publishers' turf wars - I have books tied up there....you can't print a 'competing edition' and where the e rights were NOT specifically assigned, there have been moves trying to 'claim them' but with no terms, it is terribly terribly messy; nobody wants to be caught in litigation, it's gridlock with no end in sight, and a royal nuisance for authors and readers alike - we all lose.

Many other books came out with women treated as women, and they were so isolated in the past, they are forgotten completely now the interest is starting to make waves.

Won't go on here, not to drift the thread away from the titled read.

I have Stranger at the Wedding on my TBR pile, but decided I needed to re-read The Silent Tower and the other two Windrose books first. It's been a long time since I last read them, so this is a good excuse to revisit.

>11 JannyWurts: I have a lot of older titles bought second-hand, because they were not available any other way. I feel a bit guilty knowing I could (at least now) afford to buy them new so that the author would get paid, but they were out of print. For reading fiction I prefer paperbacks (not trade) to any other format, and a lot of books are republished as trade paperbacks, which I rarely buy. It's a shame when red-tape blocks access to excellent books!

Maybe someday a person will be able to purchase any existing book and receive it in whatever format they prefer! (including choice of cover art)

Stranger at the Wedding is one of my very favorite Hamblys and one of the few I've kept. I must have read it at least 3-4 times!

Better late than never - I started this at the weekend and, at 100 pages in, am loving it. I like Kyra, and the society in which she lives feels vivid and lifelike (unlike a lot of fantasy worlds which really don't have functional economies!)

I started this weekend, too, but I stopped myself after the prologue, because I haven't written any reviews for the books I've read so far this year.

I don't know if it's because I've read other books in the same universe (though so long ago I can't remember the story, or even which series), but with just three words Hambly evoked for me the bleak despair of the Sykerst.

This will be my third or fourth reread; this is one of my all time favourite books. There are advantages to having such a bad memory, as I do; though I know I love the story, and of course I remember the general gist of it, I can rediscover the details. Looking forward to it!

I finished this over the weekend, and enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed all of the magic and Kyra's deep sense of joy and exaltation when using it, and I'll definitely be reading other works by Hambly in the future.

While there were some things I wish I'd had background on- what exactly hasu were is one that came to mind, mages working for the Church I gathered?- but mostly the references to the "events of 18 months ago" covered in The Silent Tower and sequels were vague enough to pique my interest without feeling that I'd missed anything- I do feel that some of the questions I have might all have been things that were clearer if I'd read the previous books and had a clearer view of the position of dog wizards and magic in society under more normal (or more extreme, it sounds like) circumstances, though.

While I liked Kyra and Spenson, both apart and as a couple, I felt the transition from acquaintances who could be friends to passionate lovers who can't live without each other was a bit... sudden? The kiss when Kyra was so exhausted after searching the house just seemed to come out of nowhere for me. It may just be missing or not appropriately filling in the romantic signs, though; in this month's other group read, A Fistful of Sky, there was a relationship between two female characters that seems to have thrown a lot of people off, while I found it quite well foreshadowed, so I've been wondering about that this month. I'll be curious what you all found this sudden as well or if it was just me.

But speaking of sexual orientation, though, maybe it's just that the issue is particular on my mind lately having been reading non-fiction books on the topic, but all throughout the book I couldn't help feeling that wizardry in this setting has a lot in common with the typical LGBT narratives of being "born this way," living in the closet, getting kicked out and disowned and eventually finding a comfortable place among found family, not being able to marry (and lacking other legal rights), and self-acceptance- and of course, with powers tending show up at puberty.

This excerpt from when Kyra was with Tibbeth was the most striking:

"Wizardry has a way of hurting those who are born with it who do not develop their talents." In the corner the green parrot he kept caged scratched its yellow poll and muttered half a dozen words from a love-spell. "Some do it, especially those whose inborn powers are not all that great. But more often than not they are wretched. I know. I was nearly twenty before I admitted to myself that the yearnings, the thoughts, that came and went in alternation with my more sensible moments were not going to go away."

This isn't an uncommon theme for magical power type stories, of course, but it just seemed so very explicit this time- but it made me somewhat uncomfortable that for what seemed to me to be a very deliberate parallel, there not only were no actual non-straight characters, the character who we learn most about the experience of wizardry from turns out to be a pedophile, and the other wizards evidently know about it and do nothing: "But the woman (Rosamund) asked, 'Did he try to have you? Is that why you did it? You look a little old for what we know of his tastes.'" I'm going to go with that they'd only just found out after he got brought up on charges, but maybe part of the problem is that pedophilia is something the society completely looks past- there was a joke at one point about a lord with a taste for pretty young pages or something along those lines.

But with the parallels between wizardry and the typical LGBT narrative, there's also what Fangs for the Fantasy points out, that wizards- or vampires and werewolves there, as they're more an urban fantasy focused site- as an oppressed minority doesn't really work. Hambly engaged with this a bit though, with discussions of the morality in magic- but I felt those were a bit undermined in that Kyra is able to break an ankle and cost her family thousands of crowns with not even a slap on the wrist. All in the service of a good cause, yes, but it was frustratingly inconsistent- the biggest letdown was that when Gyvinna sent the Inquisition after her, it wasn't because of things she'd actually done, but on the completely made-up charge of turning a beggar into a dog. Gyvinna- and Tibbeth- were in the perfect position to see what Kyra had actually done, being in the same house and inconspicuous, so why not share that? Perhaps because it would bring unwanted attention down on him/them as well? I just wanted to see Kyra have to actually wrestle with what she was doing more, and it felt a little contrived that she never had to when Hambly kept mentioning ethics, and whether the wizards would take Kyra back- instead it ended up whether she wanted to be with Spenson or with the wizards (and with the being with Spenson, how could she, given we're told wizards can't marry- I guess he would have taken Kyra as his mistress while being married to Alix, who would presumably carry on with Algeron?)

Actually, a whole lot of the Inquisition stuff didn't work for me. All of these incredibly, incredibly unlikely things are happening to delay the wedding, and they don't bring Kyra about for any of them? In a world with actual wizards- dog wizards that you can hire for pay to do things like this- it seemed strange that wizardry wasn't their first thought- not even the dog wizards Kyra spoke to were worried that they'd be blamed for the events. And even assuming that they look the other way unless they're deliberately provoked, if a bishop's ankle breaking wasn't enough, why wouldn't Spenson's having the two witchfinders watching Kyra's family's house removed have brought them down- after all, the logical conclusion for "someone removes the witchfinders" should be "someone is doing wizardry and wants them out of the way," shouldn't it, especially in the context of broken ankle, mice, and broken pipes already surrounding the wedding?

(And another thing, if Kyra has martial arts training as a sasenna, why couldn't she incapacitated them herself? There are enough practical reasons for her not to, but shouldn't it have crossed her mind? It felt like her sasenna training was something of a deus ex machina later on, but maybe I would have been expecting it if I'd read the earlier trilogy.)

Okay, the mystery- I didn't expect the twist with Tibbeth, though I did find it unsettling that his wife was described as "a girl" at the time we met her and that she was drab and colorless, but I chalked that up to Kyra not being interested in her and there probably being a large age difference, like with Alix and Spenson (or Kyra and Spenson later, come to think of it- Kyra is in her twenties and Spenson in his forties if I remember right?)

Once we got that background, I figured out immediately that he had done it from beyond the grave (there'd been a too-casual mention of binding a ghost into a spell earlier), operating out of probably the motive that if he couldn't have Alix nobody could (it ended up being somewhat more self-deluding than that), and that the mark was on Alix's body (okay, it was on her shift, but fairly close). I had initially expected it was something he'd set on her from the very beginning of the abuse, though, or something he'd done before he was executed at the last visit, and was only activated after his death, not that he'd possessed his wife to do it- I should have figured it would be her masquerading as one of the servants as well as "Kyra doesn't pay attention to the servants" had been built up. I thought immediately that she'd be involved and in a Stockholm syndrome type way, but I was so happy she survived it all. I honestly expected her to conveniently die at the end, as is all too typical for abuse victims in stories- there's a horrifying way of thought that "death is the kindest thing for someone so broken" that tends to rear its head in some cases, as in a book I read last year where the victim's abuse drove her magical powers out of control so that she had to be put down- and destroyed so utterly that she wouldn't have an afterlife, because her powers would ruin the afterlife. It was the kindest thing, really, truly, for her. Shudder.

The thing that didn't work about the mystery was that we the readers didn't know that about Tibbeth, but wouldn't Kyra, having known from the beginning that Tibbeth abused her sister, Tibbeth thought she betrayed him, Tibbeth died horribly, and Tibbeth worked by putting marks directly on her sister's shifts have thought to check Alix's shifts or body almost straight off? I guess she did check the dress, and checked out all of Tibbeth's rooms and everything straight off (which becomes rather chilling in retrospect, but then why not check out his previous modus operandi?) Was there evidence of Gyvinna as a laundry maid preventing this sooner? I remember Kyra leaving the room because the servants were coming several times, but I don't think Tibbeth/Gyvinna knew Kyra knew that he/they were planning to kill Alix at that point.

With the prologue, I think I can see why Hambly included it- otherwise we wouldn't have gotten to see Kyra in her element at the Citadel, which would have been a sore loss, and it was a good introduction to Rosamund and others. I wish we'd gotten more there, or a sequel to this book, to spend more time there- it's so hard to find a story with a female wizard as a protagonist (especially one where she gets to use her power throughout, instead of just finding out about it- usually from a mysterious boooy- and being ignorant until she has a sudden epiphany at the climax that allows her to defeat the villain). I think the main wizard character in the other trilogy in this setting is male, right? Are there any cool female wizards in it- our heroine, maybe? (Though I'll take a heroine who's "just" a computer programmer without complaint!)

This is definitely one I see myself coming back to for re-reads in the future- perhaps

The series this connects to is quite wonderful, and I cannot imagine you not liking it. The wizard may be male, but Joanna is the main protagonist, and you just have to love Aunt Min.

>18 JannyWurts: It's definitely on my list to read soon- all three are in my tbr already. I like wizards and magic-heavy fantasy at all, really, and though my feelings are mixed on portal fantasy, I'm intrigued by the mixture of computers with magic. Reading reviews, though, it seems like the trilogy might be quite different in tone than this book?

I loved it - the portal bit was so well done, and the plot so very unique, and the handling of characters, worlds, prose - totally skilled. The Silicon Mage is a trilogy, but it does have sequels - and they have the same tone, definitely - I find Hambly's work all of a piece, if you like her fantasies, you are quite likely to enjoy most of them, if not all. Her historicals vary in tone - the ones set in New Orleans are very sorrowful and dark/written (as the characters must have lived) at the bitter edge of hopelessness and despair, since she chose the marginalized society as her focus.

You could always try a different series of hers, first. Dragon's Bane has the same aspects - wonderful cast - adult characters/handled in a mature fashion and no weaker sex aspects. There is a great deal to admire about the breadth and depth of Hambly's work (she is one of my favorites) and for the life of me, it's puzzling why she is not at the top of the charts.

Though adult protags being a choice I've shared - those books do take a lot longer to break out - sometimes up to ten years or more, and to do that requires constant publisher support - Hambly, and so many female authors - have not received that. It's embarrassing she's never received a major award. Her work compares well with Bujold's - but a bit more complex - both in prose style, in attitude, (I am striking for - they are a bit less 'happy go lucky' in aspect).

So I just finished Stranger at the Wedding. Better late than never, right?

Overall, I enjoyed Stranger at the Wedding, but it's not a book that I'll ever reread.

The plot sounds like a straight forward mystery - who's trying to kill Alix? - but doesn't really work as one since so much necessary information is hidden in the flashbacks.

Like others on this thread, I liked the world building and thought it was well realized. The descriptions of the city really helped it come alive and give it a sense of place. The industrial revolution was a nice touch and made it something different than the standard "medieval Europe" fantasy. That element probably stood out the most. While everything else was well realized, it didn't feel particularly unique.

I liked Kyra, but I never really loved her. For whatever reason there just wasn't that emotional connection to her. It was also nice how she wasn't the only likable or capable female character.

The romance felt both predictable and sudden. I was certain Spens was the love interest by Kyra's second scene with her. First she trips and falls into his arms, then he rescues her from possible kidnappers (did we ever find out who those people where sent by?). I was mildly annoyed by the number of times she clumsily fell and he had to catch her. It just feels really contrived. Plus, they were madly in love with each other after something like three days? I did like that between giving up everything to "be with him" (wizards are banned from marrying, so she'd be his mistress?) and returning to the Citadel and her education, she chose to continue learning magic. It feels unusual for a female protagonist to chose her education over love, although I've seen a fair number of male protagonists chose their education/career/magic over love. It was nice how this was a reversal.

The local used book store seems to have materialized a large selection of Hambly novels, so I may very well be reading more this summer.

>16 humouress: Oh; looks like I forgot to come back here after I read Sorceror's Ward. This being a favourite from my teenage years, it's hard to review it objectively, especially as I do remember at least some of the twists and turns (despite my ageing memory).

Still love it. I found Kyra's perpetual clumsiness quite endearing, rather than having a 'perfect' heroine (or hero). The universe is, I agree, well constructed. I do feel sorry for the wizards; they have such a hard time of it, the acknowledged ones being banished to the barren waste of the Sykerst and only allowed small magics.

I agree, the romance seemed a bit sudden to me this time, but he's not the typical tall-dark-and-handsome hero-type, either, which I like.

I'm a bit distracted - my 6 year old is asking for help. I'll just finish off saying that if there were more stories in Kyra's future, I would definitely read them.