Need some good reading?

marthawells has just started posting The Element of Fire on her LJ, people. This is her first book, it's excellent, long out of print, people have been fighting for second-hand copies, and you can read it online for free now. Woo!

I could never find this book myself, not even at the Worldcon in Glasgow (where a dealer said to me, "Element of Fire? Oh yeah, I have it. At home. First edition. Nyar." :stabbity:). But I did have a pirated ebook version, and I read it and loved it even though it was full of typoes from bad OCR - and now that same pirated ebook has been put to use helping marthawells come up with a true, authorized ebook edition. I love that.

The Element of Fire is a fantasy, set in the world of Ile-Rien, like several of her other books (Death of the Necromancer and the Wizard Hunters trilogy), but it's a standalone novel.

It's got the atmosphere of an Elizabethan court, with intrigue, swordfights, sorcerers, and a war against the fay. The plot fairly bowls along, and I love the cast of characters - Thomas, the dashing, dryly witty Captain of the Guard and favorite of the Queen, Kade the dangerous, unpredictable bastard princess, her sulky brother Roland and his boyfriend Denzil, and the Queen herself, who is a very tough cookie indeed.

Here's a nicely creepy bit from the opening chapter, where Thomas and his men are breaking into a sorcerer's house:

He took an involuntary step backward.

"Captain, what is it?" Gideon's whisper was harsh.

Thomas didn't answer. He was looking around the room as the faces in the floral carving over the chimneypiece shifted their blank white eyes, their tiny mouths working silently. The bronze snake twined around the supporting pole of a candlestand stirred sluggishly. In the woolen carpet the interwoven pattern of vines writhed.

Keeping hold of the rope, Gideon chinned himself on the window ledge to see in. He cursed softly.

"Worse than I thought," Thomas agreed, not looking away from the hideously animate room.