This is a collection of three short novels from three different worlds created by Ms. Lackey. I have to admit I enjoyed the first one the most, “Arcanum 101.” It is set in 1970s Cambridge, MA and though written fresh for this collection, the author considers it the first story dealing with Wicca Guardian Diana Tregarde. The details she brings to Diana just starting her first year at Harvard are wonderful. Tregarde gets her first job helping the detective Joe O’Brien ostensibly uncover a psychic fraud who is feeding clues to a distraught mother about her missing daughter in a very high profile kidnapping case. Of course, there is more to the story than Diana working to debunk the psychic. We get to see Tregarde’s magic working and the college friends who help reveal the truth about the kidnapping. This is a great story.
The second “Drums” is based on the characters Lackey created for the novel “Sacred Ground.” This is about the private investigator/medicine woman Jennifer Talldeer and her partner David Spotted Horse. They live in a small town in Oklahoma. She and her partner are asked to discover what’s wrong with a talented Chickasaw jeweler Caroline Gray who has isolated herself from her friends and the general patterns of her life. Her long-time boyfriend is concerned and really wants to know if it’s simply she’s seeing someone else…or what. During their investigation Talldeer and Spotted Horse find Gray out dancing in near exhaustion on her isolated property with mi-ah-lushka the ghost of an Osage man who died without honor. The investigators come to discover that the mi-ah-lushka believes Caroline is the reincarnation of the woman he loved over a century ago that flung herself off a cliff in despair because she was in love with someone else. The ghost is trying to get Caroline to join him in the spirit world. Talldeer does a shawl-dance to send the evil one back. The medicine woman gets some help from the powerful Mockingbird and Coyote during her dance. Again, this story was rich in details and gives the reader a fascinating look into Native American culture.
The final story “Ghost in the Machine” set in contemporary times about game programmers and an evil gaming character that becomes real inside the workings of an involved fantasy MMORPG was tedious in the extreme. And to be perfectly honest, the plot was not compelling and seemed more of an after-thought to support all the computer language. Most of the time I had no idea what she was talking about. Since I neither game nor have much interest in that I skimmed over most of the story. This is strictly for those of you out there who know on-line gaming and programming and really get off on computer slang and coding, etc. ~~ Sue Martin
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