Product Description

A reissue of classic backlist titles from the author of the best selling Farseer Trilogy and The Liveship Traders books. The third book in the Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) backlist . The Limbreth Gate is book three in The Windsingers series, following Harpy's Flight and The Windsingers, which introduced her popular gypsy characters, Ki and Vandien.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67465 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
Praise for Megan Lindholm: 'A bright new talent in the fantasy field' Charles de Lint 'Lindholm has created a refreshingly different magic' Locus 'Fascinating, absorbing and well written' Fantasy Review Readers comments from Amazon.com: Victor from New York, October 10th 2000: It rises beyond adventure in challenging the reader to confront destiny, good vs. evil, freedom, and divinity...This is a book you will think about a long time. Fiona, April 15th 2000: Lindholm's characters are so believable, because she gives them comfortable and uncomfortable feelings in themselves and toward each other, something we all know and can relate to.

About the Author
Megan Lindholm was born in California in 1952 and majored in Communications at Denver University, Colorado. A winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Award, she wrote a number of successful fantasy novels, including Cloven Hooves, The Windsinger trilogy and Wizard of the Pigeons before taking the name, Robin Hobb. Assassin's Apprentice was Robin Hobb's first novel, and was followed by the equally successful Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest. She lives outside Seattle, Washington.

Customer Reviews

Excellent storytelling
From the hands of my favourite author came this fantastic story. Part of the Ki and Vandien quartet, we continue our journey alongside our wandering pair as they embark on an adventure more surreal and thought-provoking than any so far.

The basic storyline surrounds a magical porthole- the titular Limbreth Gate- which draws Ki into another world, where everything seems perfect, yet has a strange, unsettling underside to it that adds great depth and mystery to the story as it unravels. Obviously, there are many other strands in the thread of the narrative, or this wouldn't be Lindholm. It is the various strands, and how they diverge and cross over that provides much of the complexity and involvement in this story.

I have to say, this one is quite different to the other titles in this quartet- surreal is the word I have chosen, and it's the one I'll stick to in my description of this book.

Ki and Vandien are deep and well-explored characters, in the tradition of Megan Lindholm's writing, so it is always a pleasure to follow their adventures and travels.

The curious thing is, it didn't strike me as an adventure: yet again, Lindholm subverted the ostensibly fantastical basis of the story with intense realism, achieved through characters, situations and the relationship between these two elements that is thoroughly grounded and easy to empathise with. Even as the story becomes more abstract, there are small descriptions and conversations that act as little hooks, keeping the narrative on the ground, even as parts of it reach to pretty cloudy heights.

Though it isn't my favourite of the quartet- hence the four stars- it's a fantastic book with a compelling story, and if you've read any of Lindholm's books before, you'll definitely enjoy this. If you've read any of Robin Hobb's books (Megan Lindholm's present writer's alias), as I have, you'll thoroughly enjoy the experience of seeing how she progressed in the ideas and style she uses so adeptly and stunningly today.

Buy. Enjoy!

Food for the soul
Megan Limdholm's prose continues to be an absolute delight as we enter the third book in the `Ki and Vandian' quartet- her language really is gorgeous- particularly in her descriptions of food and drink. My mouth watered as I consumed this tale, nourishing my soul if not my stomach as I read.

And at last with this book loyal readers are rewarded with some advancement of Ki's personal story that was begun with the human/harpy slaughter at the beginning of book one. Since then and before I reached the middle of this book, I hadn't felt like the author had lived up to that spectacular debut of her feisty lead female character. But with a surprising revelation from Dresh the magician Lindholm re-opens the character-can-of-worms, exploring a depth to Ki that I'd felt sorely lacking in the previous story and it's a revelation which has the potential to bring this quartet to an explosive conclusion.

`The Limbreth Gate' is a much simpler story than I was expecting, especially following on from the intricate plotting of `The Windsingers', but maybe that's why I preferred it- that and the fact that some semblance of order to Ki's life and to the world around her (that supports various different species) is beginning to take shape. I found this much more satisfying than the whirlpool of action, characters and plot devices in `The Windsingers', which didn't seem to reveal much about Ki or Vandian as characters, or advance their personal stories, but rather seemed to suspend the complexities of their lives and the tragedies in their past in favour of a diverting one-off adventure.

Highly enjoyable. Very much looking forward to the final chapter- `Luck of the Wheels', although at the same time- definitely not looking forward to the series ending. No one does bittersweet like Lindholm.