Spiral Of Fire

Mages of Garillon #3

by Deborah Turner Harris

Caradoc Penluathe, once-failed Mage, is now a great healer despite himself. But now his enemy, Borthen Berigeld, has unleased a scourge in the shape of a young boy possessed with a demon of the netherworld, and Caradoc must join his foulest enemy if anything is to survive.

Genres: Fantasy

468 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Deborah Turner Harris (born 1951 in Pennsylvania), is an American fantasy author, best known for her collaborations with Katherine Kurtz. She lives in Scotland and is married to Scottish author Robert J. Harris.

Reviews

[LAURENCE O GORMAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant fantastic roller coster third book which kept me enthralled from the first chapter. I found myself looking forward to getting home from work so I could get back to the far more important job of urging on Caradoc, Margot, Serdor and Evelake and all their companions. I thought the first book in the trilogy was good but not brilliant but when I got halfway through the second book things stated to gather momentum and I found the third book, The Spiral of Fire to be a first class, completely engrossing read. So many thank yous from me to Deborah Turner Harris for this brilliant Mages of Garrillion trilogy. I am now going to read the Temple and the Crown having already read the Temple and the Stone, another great book. I have also bought the three books of Caledonia of the Mists which are on my bookshelf waiting to be read. I am a great admirer of The Adept books and I am hoping there will be a sixth book forthcoming from Deborah Turner Harris and Katherine Kurtz. I have enjoyed lots of Katherine Kurtz books, all the Adept series, about the first five Deryni books and I just loved Lammas Night. I met Katherine Kurtz at a fantasy, sci fi convention a good few years ago in Dun Laoghaire, Dublin and she was kind enough to sign my collection of her books. I have them safe on my bookshelves a treasure worth more than their weight in gold. So that's about it for now two brilliant writers I cannot praise and recommend highly enough. Thank you both very much....Go raibh Maithili agat....Labhras

[Aerine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting to the end of the book, and you start to wonder how the *&@* it's going to get wrapped up in so few pages! Something about the end made me think that the author was given a 5 minute warning to finish up. Yes, it ended. Yes, it worked out. But.... Then what happened? Imagine: you write the end of WWII as "The bomb was dropped, and that pretty much ended the war."
UM!

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this really is high fantasy, with an insane finale including demon possession, an undead army (not my thing, personally), a trippy journey through the pararealm, OP'd wizardy powers, all meshed with traditional medieval-style castle siege and battle. In one way, it ends exactly the way it should, and the way you expect, no surprises here, and I'm satisfied, but in another way there is something missing. I think it's partly the stakes - on the surface, they appear to be pretty high, the Devourer and his undead army are powerful and scary, but then you have the healing powers of the Magia, and in this book it feels as though one person after another is close to death, who ends up getting healed. And all our main characters survive. I think at least one of them should have died..

I liked our main group of characters, Tessa being my favourite, although I wouldn't say there's a whole lot of character depth - reading this, given the fairly distant third person POVs, bordering on omniscient, is more like watching an action-packed fantasy series on TV. I guess it's the style you'd expect for the time period in which it was written. I like that it's written by a woman, and you can mostly tell, if you remember that it was written in the 80s. In the epilogue Caradoc planning to change things as Arch-Mage, to include men and women and our - multiple - female characters having, for the most part, pivotal, important roles. I plan to read more female classic fantasy authors, especially from the 70s-90s.

[Stuart Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really 3.5 stars, but it is just good enough to round up to a 4 star review. The storyline in this installment of the trilogy was clearly the best in terms of both organization and just being well thought out. That being said, I thought the author did an ok job describing the siege up to the end, but failed to deal with a number of loose ends such as, what happened to all the revenants, undead and their command structure once Gywn (Thanatos) was defeated? Not ever a word wasted on that. There were several other loose ends that we have to use our imagination to extrapolate with, such as what happened to Borthelm (sic). In any event, the series is very typical of one from the 80s, where the content of the story overshadows explanations as to how the universe they are in works. Certain assumptions are made such as calendar time, seasons, hours in the day, etc. that the reader is to take at face value. Overall a simple series, particularly when it came to explanations (or lack thereof) of extraordinary abilities manifesting themselves in adult individuals, but I still enjoyed it enough.

[Reforming · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned. I am only reading books that I really enjoy at this point. Used to be I would finish just about everything, but I have realized that I am not going to be able to read every book now. First book was OK, second just didn't capture my interest. I am not going to read this one and have noted it for my personal use, so I don't forget and pick it up again.