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The Twisted Citadel (Sara Douglass, Voyager, $32.99 tpb, ISBN 9780732282905, June) ****

There are three perilous things a fantasy writer may attempt that often end in disaster. The first is to extend a popular franchise past its original conclusion. The second is to resurrect a fan favourite character who has been convincingly killed. The third is to try to tie together a group of their previously released works into a unifying opus. In her latest series Sara Douglass has done all three of these things—and made them work in a way that few of her contemporaries can manage. The Twisted Citadel is the second title in the ‘Darkglass Mountain’ series. The series pulls together Axis Sunsoar, protagonist of the hugely popular ‘Axis’ and ‘Wayfarer’ trilogies, and Maximilian Persimius from the stand-alone title Beyond the Hanging Wall. The back story for the antagonists comes from another stand-alone title Threshold. The beauty of this work is that it is not dependent on the previous works, but stands on its own considerable merit. For her long-term readers there is a depth they will enjoy, and new readers will find themselves drawn to her earlier work. This is a darkly sensual tale, replete with the machinations and intrigue that Douglass does so well and nothing less than you would expect from our best fantasy writer.

Stefen Brazuliatis is a customer service manager with 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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