Icefalcon's Quest

Set about 2 years after Mother of Winter, the 7-year old King Tir is kidnapped by Bektis the Mage and a group of renegade Alketchians. The banished White Raider, Icefalcon, sets out to rescue him, a journey which takes him back to his roots among the White Raiders, and ends up in a forgotten Keep buried in the ice of the North.

The usual well-written story by Hambly, this concludes the main Darwath series, although there are 3 self-published novellas available from the usual sources (unfortunately expensive for 50+ pages).

I enjoyed the story, although I thought it the weakest of the sequels to the original trilogy. The trouble with revisiting earlier worlds is the law of dimishing returns - once you’ve defeated the big bad, the only show more thing left is to defeat a bigger bad - which is what Mother of Winter involved. Here, the focus was on search and rescue - and although there was a big bad to defeat, it was human in scale and not world-spanning.

Recommended. show less

I liked this quite a bit. It was interesting to see more about Icefalcon’s people. The way their culture and language reflect back on each other was neat.

The descriptions of people in the duplication box is utterly horrific. It was well done though and I think necessary. It would be too easy to side step the awfulness since the victim ‘survives’. It was still terribly vivid.

I read this when a song with lyrics about “In the real world” was on a lot. It was a little surreal :)

While this wasn't a bad book, it just felt unnecessary. After the Darwath series concluded, Hambly must have felt a need to return to a favorite character. This book is set in the same world, with the same situation and characters, but the focus shifts to the Icefalcon. Previously he was a dangerous and somewhat mysterious member of the Guards, a former White Raider barbarian. A return to Darwath is always welcome, but this book just seemed a little out of place compared to the others.
Hambly is an excellent fantasy writer, and for that alone this is worth reading, though this is good, but not exceptional. There's certainly much worse out there.

The warrior Icefalcon tracks down a rogue wizard who kidnapped Prince Tir from the Keep of Dare. The story focuses on Icefalcon’s redemption and journey to the icy North, confronting his past among the White Raiders.

Prince Tir is taken by a mysterious figure from the Keep of Dare while it is under siege by the army of Alketch. Icefalcon, holding himself responsible for the prince's safety, embarks on a desperate rescue mission.

His journey takes his original northern home, where he faces his people, the Talking Stars People, and his sister, the shaman Cold Death.

Substance: Hardships of the heroic quest to save a king, who is still just a little boy. Interwoven with the more traditional quest of finding one's true self.
Style: Omniscient narrator, but localized often to the POV of the Icefalcon, in order to explicate his personal quest.
Goes as a pair with "Mother of Winter", which are a follow-on to the Darwath Trilogy.
Not a bad read, but I have to start letting some books go.