A modern fairy tale. The characters are starting to get more fleshed out in this second book of the series. I am planning on reading more. Recommended to fantasy fans. ( )

This book is in fact two short book-ettes jammed into one paperback, but both are about the same characters, and in fact they are books one and two of a series of... five-ish? Unlike The Chrome Borne, which has books one and four of seven, just to confuse everyone.

SPOILER WARNING!
The first story is about how some evil elf wants to kill all the other elves who live in '80s California so that he can rule all the elves. Well, the ones who aren't dead. I think. And our three heroes, some elf guy called Korendil and a couple of Ren Faire musicians (Beth, a witch, and Eric, a Bard, some kind of wizard who uses music to cast spells), try to stop him. Oh, also Eric angsts about how he's totally in love with Beth and Kory, but they're already dating each other and Kory is an elf and a man and omg, his life is so hard.

The second story is about the same three trying to stop a different bad guy. Well, first they try to stop him kidnapping psychic people... which ends up with loads of people dying and the bad guy being possessed by some kind of weird monster from another dimension. Then they try to stop the possessed bad guy from deliberately starting an earthquake to destroy San Francisco. Which will somehow allow all the other weird monsters to come into this dimension. Or something.
/END SPOILERS

Anyway! A highly odd book, as expected from Mercedes Lackey, but actually less crazy than The Chrome Borne. And pretty amusing. ( )

Okay, I'm sure it's not the best book in the world, but it's still one of my favorites and better than most of the rest in the series. ( )

excellent series!

Originally published in two different parts: Knight of Ghosts and Shadows; Summoned to Tourney