DAGGER-STAR

Author: Elizabeth Vaughn ISBN: 9780425220610 4/2008 FANTASY/PARANORMAL Publisher: BERKLEY SENSATION

After captivating readers with her Chronicles of the Warlands trilogy, Elizabeth Vaughan now returns to that world with a beguiling tale of daggers and destiny, a cold and beautiful mercenary known as Red Gloves, and Josiah, a lone fighter emerging from the torched fields and razed farms of his homeland. All Josiah knows about the mysterious woman is her dagger-star birthmark, a sign that she is destined to free the people from a ruthless usurper's reign of terror.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Red Gloves is a mercenary, first and foremost. If there's no profit to be made then she doesn't want any part of it, and when the land you find yourself in happens to be in the middle of a civil war, it's a great time to be a merc! Unfortunately someone above is laughing at poor Red Gloves because though she wants only a simple job and maybe a bed partner, she gets wound up in a prophecy, land in peril and romantic entanglement.

DAGGER-STAR features one of the most unabashedly fierce women I have ever run across in paranormal romance fiction yet (though this will feel more like a fantasy as you read it—what with elves, mages, mercenaries and High Lord this and High Lady that). Red Gloves is as likely to laugh with a man as she is to fight him, and twice as likely to slit his throat if she felt he was double-dealing her.

This is set in the same world as her Warprize trilogy (WARPRIZE, WARSWORN and WARLORD), but prior knowledge of the world merely means you will understand the back story behind the 'stories' that a character mentions and tells. DAGGER-STAR is set after the events of the trilogy and has little to do with them.

Interesting to note is the evolution of Red Gloves from chapter one to the last few chapters. Her sword-sister, Bethral, has little 'new' development from what we are first introduced to, but Red Gloves, who claims she is only heading the rebellion for the profit in the end, slowly changes to realize that more than the people of Palins need her, she needs them. It's startling when later in the book she makes a choice between sleeping with a man to gain his favor (the quick way) or the slower method—she chooses the slower method.

There is humor here which pokes fun at stereotypes and fantasy tropes that are often used however unrealistically and never explained. There is also adult content—violence and sex; the violence is well detailed and the sex is explicit, but not unduly shocking. Red Gloves makes no bones about the fact she loves life and all it has to give, including a bed partner.

There is to be at least one more book, appropriately titled RED GLOVES, due out in the next year, since some of the mysteries are not wrapped up as neatly as some syndicated shows about sword-wielding females would have you think.

Alexandra Cenni