Stranger at the Wedding by Barbara Hambly

[meganbmoore]

Kyra is a young journeyman wizard about to take her final tests before her Council. However, something is affecting her magic in unusual ways, culminating in a vision of her younger sister, Alix, dying on her wedding night. Not about to let such a thing happen, Kyra leaves the Citadel and returns home in the midst of the wedding preparations, despite having been exiled by her father six years before.

The book is set in the same world as The Silicon Mage, The Silent Tower and The Dog Wizard, but has little connection to them. I think Kyra was mentioned as Random Young Wizard #3 or something in The Dog Wizard, but the storylines of the first three have virtually no impact on Stranger at the Wedding. Instead, the book focuses on Kyra’s attempts to both save and reconnect with her family, even as she does everything in her power to sabotage and postpone Alix’s wedding to fend off the vision, and on her background.

The book is darker than the other books in the series, touching on themes that were mentioned as a part of Antryg’s past before, but never as directly addressed, and deals almost entirely with the non-wizard society of the world, which we haven’t seen a lot of before. Though the final reveals about Kyra’s past are difficult to read, I thought it was very interesting to see how Kyra and her father got to where he blamed her for almost destroying the family. In the end, I can’t approve of how he treated her, but I can understand how he came to be like that. But I almost always like focus on family in fiction, and I like that the plot revolved around Kyra being determined to save her sister by any means necessary. I also really liked her various adventures and intrigues as she tried to figure out what was behind the danger to Alix, and the romance was cute, despite being a trope I’m not a huge fan of.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

What's the trope that you didn't like in the romance?

That is a really dark book! I was not expecting that, given the fluffy sound of the premise.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Oh, that he was engaged to her sister. It was done in a way that I could never really object to (arranged marriage, sister in love with someone else, he's all for letting her be with the other guy and not about to insist they both be made miserable, etc.) I just let out a huge sigh when I realized he was going to be Kyra's love interest, even though nothing about the actual handling of it annoyed me.

It was dark! I was expecting the reveal to be that her mentor had been manipulating her, or that he was stealing from the family, not that!

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

I always skip most of the reveal of what caused Alix's wedding difficulties (to be as spoiler-free as possible), though I did read it the first time through.

Kyra was one of the mages in the blood circle in Dog Wizard. I might possibly love her more than.... Actually, I don't love her more than Joanna, though I love her nearly as much, and thus, obsess about her.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

She's a different kind of awesome. The reveal is odd because it starts more fun and (to steral Rachel's word) fluffy and you think it's a caper type thing with her trying to hold off the wedding, and then we get to the dark stuff.

They're different kinds of awesome. They should have an adventure where they have to go and rescue their men.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

I agree, I love a focus on family, and despite the trope being generally bad I liked it anyway because of Kyra and her suitor not being all that attractive but coming to find each other attractive, something I'm a huge sucker for.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes! I was all squeeful over all the attention on family, which is hard to find in fantasy unless they're all trying to kill each other.

And yeah, the trope was handled in the most positive way possible and didn't utilize any of the annoying elements of the trope, so I don't mind as much. It kind of feels like he was the sister's fiance because that way the sister would have a (relatively) nice person willing to break off and who wouldn't be hurt, rather than the usual angst and jealousy shortcuts.