Dog Wizard (The Windrose Chronicles, Volume Three)

Dog Wizard (The Windrose Chronicles, Volume Three)
Barbara Hambly, 1993

Premise: Sequel to The Silent Tower and Silicon Mage. Joanna again returns to Antryg’s home dimension, but not willingly this time. Antryg follows in search of her, but he finds his former colleagues are less concerned with the fact that he’d escaped his death sentence than with who or what is causing severe disturbances in the Void. Disturbances that threaten to unhinge the world of magic, and trap both Antryg and Joanna between dimensions.

This is a tremendously misleading
cover, just FYI.

This book is set about 6 months after Silicon Mage, but the publication dates are five years apart. As such, Dog Wizard is less “Part Three” and more “the continuing adventures of.” Some characters recur, but the tone and the emphasis is a bit different, and the plot is relatively unconnected to the previous books.

It was a pretty fun book, though. This book spent much more time with Antryg, getting into his head, where the previous ones mostly focused on Joanna. There was a lot more about magicians and their private culture and interactions. They hold themselves somewhat separate from the world, but are always actually interacting with locals and in danger from authorities. It felt a lot like the community in some liberal arts colleges I know, both for good and for ill.

I was surprised to see the return of one character in particular, but happy. The multiverse implied by this series doesn’t get a lot of play, otherwise.

The solution to the mystery was satisfying and sad, and while I saw one of the final twists coming, I still enjoyed it when it landed. It does rather beg for another sequel, but other than a stand-alone book in the same world and a handful of priced-just-too-high-for-a-short-story offerings on the author’s website, this is the end of the story for now.

Similar to the other offerings by Open Road Media, this book had terrible OCR translation. It wasn’t unreadable by any means, and it didn’t have the section break problem that plagued Silicon Mage, but it confuses “the” and “me” a lot. So. My advice: only buy the Kindle/Nook/etc. version on a very cheap sale, or if you’ve got room, check it out in paperback.

4 Stars - A Very Good Book