Sorcery Rising
Fool's Gold Book 1
Jude Fisher
Daw Books, 2002, 469 pp

The jacket copy touts FIsher as the "best-selling author of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Visual Companion" after having worked with Peter Jackson on the film trilogy. I guess credentials like that are enough to intimidate the modern Fantasy editor. This series could have benefited from a heavy hand in the editing department.

The storey's good though - or rather, stories. This is the first problem: there are too many story tracks.

The saga is set in a strange magical world, where a vaguely Norse culture, a vaguely Middle-Eastern culture, and a Nomadic/Gypsy culture all come together at an "Allfair". At least one set of characters from each culture join a legendary wizard's servant/apprentice who has escaped by putting the wizard into a trance and fleeing with the magical cat and the wizard's mistress.

Meanwhile, in the Norse culture, a young girl is coming of age. She gets into trouble at the allfair and threatens the frigile truce between the Norse and Middle-Eastern cultres.

Another thread follows a repressed younger son in the Middle Eastern culture.

Both are sensitive to the return of the magic of the land, which only the Wandering Nomads really understand.

More stories follow the Norse Raiders who are tricked into planning a raid on the Wizard's stronghold, finishing him off without directly involving the Slave.

Confused?

Like I said, needs an editor.

Still, interesting takes on Magic, which we may hope becomes more important in the second and third books.

I note that while this is a 2002 publication, and that the third volume is out this year, niether the second nor third volumes appear in my local libraries' catalogs, even through ILL. I may not be the only one struggling to wade through the series.