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The Demon Horseman: Dreaming in Amber Book 4 (Tony Shillitoe, Voyager, $20.99 pb, ISBN 9780732281748 July) ***

The cover will tell you that this is the fourth volume of the ‘Dreaming in Amber’ series. While the quartet does stand alone in terms of readability, this is really the latest adventure in what is probably the most detailed world in Australian fantasy. Beginning with the ‘Andrakis’ trilogy and returning with the ‘Ashuak’ chronicles, Shillitoe has created a setting of remarkable depth. His use of Australian animals, plants and even landscape is always such a refreshing change from the faux Europe that is the mainstay of so much fantasy. Places and people have a reality to them, changing over time. Societies and cultures evolve, new technologies appear. An eternal feudalism is not what Shillitoe creates. His world has too much energy to stagnate. His characters are also atypical. The protagonist of this quartet, a teenager at the start of the series, is now an old woman. Meg has spent her life in the almost vain attempt to set her world to rights against the fanatical machinations of the Seers, religious zealots. There is love, pain, hope and loss as Meg returns to battle the Seers a final time. There are few bodies of work in fantasy that truly deserve to be called epic, this is one of them.

Stefen Brazulaitis is a customer service manager at Borders, Perth

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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