The Fall of ile-Rein

The technology level is early Industrial Age, and the inhabitants of the prosperous kingdom nation of Ile-Rein enjoy a standard of living that includes motorcars and steamships. The science behind much of their technology, however, is magic, and their scientists mages. Mages work in institutes and universities to expand their knowledge and technology.

The ambiance is slightly steampunk, with gentlemen dressing for dinner, women being more decorative than useful, and a fine sense that decorum must be preserved.

The Wizard Hunters

The Wizard Hunters launches the trilogy, with Nicholas Valiarde's playgirl daughter Tremaine contemplating suicide. Playwright, partygirl, general Girl-About-Town, Tremaine would in the US be diagnosed with depression and suitably medicated.

As it turns out, there's an exogenous reason for her depression - the strange magical sphere she inherited from her deceased father Nicholas (see above), a Villers Sphere created by a powerful mage.

Ile-Rein is under siege; the powerful and mysterious 'Gardier' are threatening to take over the kingdom, and her Villers Sphere may hold the key to survival for the nation.

Using technology you don't understand is always tricky, and so it proves here - the Villers Sphere, correctly employed, holds the power to open gates between worlds, and it is from another world that the Gardier are coming to launch their attacks.

Tremaine and a collection of mages find themselves on a world with a much lower level of technology, a world in which wizards are hunted and killed. The social structure and culture of the Syprians reminds the reader of Native American life, and the intruders from Ile-Rein must make alliances with the 'savages', to band together against their mutual enemy Gardier, in spite of the Syprians prejudice (with, it turns out, good

The Rest of the Story

The Fall of Ile-Rein continues in The Ships of Air and concludes in The Gate of Gods. Tremaine, her colleagues from Ile-Rein, and assorted Syprian allies - including Tremaine's new husband, wedded to cement the alliance and whom Tremaine then falls in love with at her leisure - discover the Gardier are from yet a third world, attacking Ile-Rein from Syprian staging areas. The conclusion is a world-hopping action-adventure on a scale rarely seen outside the StarGate television series, hardly surprising, perhaps, since Martha Wells also pens novels for the Stargate franchise.