Rating: Excellent

There are stories in this world that can take my breath away--stories that are so beautiful that they make my heart ache, make me want to be a better person, make me want to write something just as beautiful so that maybe I can share something, anything of what I felt while I was reading them with someone else. Holly Lisle's Secret Text Trilogy--Diplomacy of Wolves, Vengeance of Dragons, and Courage of Falcons--tells one of those stories.

(The three novels are really one story, which is why I'm reviewing them together--like all my reviews, this one's spoiler-free, so read on without worrying about me revealing the major plot points of the second or third book.)

Kait Galweigh is a junior diplomat in her Family's house who is assigned to watch her tipsy, soon-to-be-wed cousin during some of the pre-wedding festivities. It's her chance to prove that she can contribute to her Family--something that's incredibly important to her, since she's secretly a skinshifter who, if she was ever found out, would be killed by the same Family she longs to be accepted by.

Believing everyone in her Family is dead and unaware that magic still exists in her world, Kait escapes to a nearby island for help, egged on by the voice of an ancestor who showed up in her head when the magic went awry. But when there's no help to be found, Kait charters a ship to a faraway land to find the lost Mirror of Souls, which her ancestor claims will bring her Galweigh relatives back to life. She ends up on the same ship as Hasmal, a man she met at the party who in turn tried to get as far away from her as he possibly could. And behind them in pursuit is Ry Sabir, a fellow skinshifter who wants Kait for his own--and, guided by what he believes to be the voice of his dead older brother, seeks the Mirror of Souls for himself.

Okay, it sounds like your ordinary fantasy story--but Lisle is excellent at turning the tables on the reader just when they think they've read it all before.

I'll readily admit that the story has its faults--Kait started to grate on my nerves about midway through Vengeance of Dragons, and I never cared as much about what happened to her as I did about what happened to Hasmal and Kait's uncle Dughall. And while I'm all up for a good cliffhanger, the ending of the first two books is incredibly abrupt--if you're hooked on Diplomacy of Wolves halfway through, make sure you have Vengeance and Courage nearby--and the third novel is such a page-turner that the ending feels anticlimactic and left me wanting more.

But enough of that--I love these books, and I don't mind admitting that they brought me to tears on more than one occasion both times I've read them. The trilogy is about love and loss and hope and sacrifice and self-sacrifice and finding the courage to do what you know is right when faced with overwhelming odds and unimaginable consequences, and I haven't read another author who can tell that kind of story like Lisle can. Reading these novels always leaves me hoping that if I'm ever faced with a situation comparable to what these characters faced--y'know, without the magic and the shape-shifting and all--that I can find it within myself to make the choices I know to be right even if those choices seem to lead to hopeless ends.

The worldbuilding in this series is admirable--Lisle's created a whole society and system of magic that are unique and completely believable. The lack of consequences for magic in the Harry Potter series has always bothered me, but that's not a problem here--magic has rules and if you use it, you pay for it somehow. I've poked around on the Internet and found reviews from folks who found it "disgusting" that one of the types of magic, Falcon magic, requires the caster to offer their own blood for the spell, and I'm more than a little puzzled by that, because that's one of my favorite things about that type of magic--you have to sacrifice yourself to do great things.

I also saw some reviewers--who've clearly never read George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice" series--whining about gratuitous violence in the Secret Texts. Yes, there's some graphic violence, but gratuitous? I don't think so. What violence there is serves a purpose--to give the villains depth and complexity, and to show the reader that what sort of evil the heroes are dealing with. I like that Lisle doesn't shy away from telling it like it is--there is evil in this world, and pretending it doesn't exist because it's more gruesome than you'd like to think doesn't make it go away.

So if you want a fantasy trilogy with magic (three kinds!), a fairly high-tech society, sweeping themes, and an "oh-no-she-didn't!" plot, check out the Secret Text trilogy by Holly Lisle--Diplomacy of Wolves, Vengeance of Dragons, and Courage of Falcons. And if you like them, there's a prequel called Vincalis the Agitator, which is also a delightful read. And check out hollylisle.com, which has a ton of great information for readers and writers.

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