Maggie Furey's 'Artefacts of Power' series

I have started picking up fantasy books at random in the library - this is safer than picking up books at random in the bookshops, since I can easily take books back to the library unread (sorry, Diane Duane, but your talking cats didn't do anything for me !) and without having spent £6+ of my hard earned cash. Fortunately it is, more often than not, a useful practice. I've picked up quite a few books at random that led me to reading an entire series: Jan Siegal's Prospero's Children and its sequels was one such book that turned out very nicely indeed. Another book that is promising is Maggie Furey's Aurian. In fact, it's proving to be useful background reading for two forthcoming writing projects, as well as interesting reading in its own right ! The Magefolk live apart from the Mortals, and it is not the done thing for a Mage and a Mortal to mate, but Aurian is about to break the rules with swordsman Forral. Which will lead to more trouble than she can imagine since the Archmage had his eye on her for his own consort. Mages don't have children very often because it leads to a loss of power for the woman during pregnancy (an interesting twist if ever there was one), so the Magefolk are a dwindling race, but Archmage Miathan dreams of restoring them to their former glory, with himself as ruler of the whole world. I've only read 10 chapters so far, but Miathan is a character begging to get his comedownance (in other words, to be brought to the worst possible place he can go to) - he's a murdering, power-crazed old man and I just know he's got to come to a nasty end. If he doesn't I shall be really upset with Maggie Furey.

Aurian is the first of a quartet of books, The Artefacts of Power series. The sequels are Harp of Winds, The Sword of Flame and Dhiammara.

Oh, and a word about the links you'll find in my posts - I'm an Amazon associate, which means that any books you purchase following the links provided on my Blog will earn me a small percentage of the purchase price, and at the end of each quarter, if I've earned more than the minimum (£10 at Amazon.co.uk), I receive a gift certificate. Whilst I'm not urging you to buy from Amazon, if you do, you'll be doing me a small favour ! (I earn such a small amount that it took me 6 months to earn more than the minimum during the year-to-date, so I'm not exactly going to be making a fortune.) I plan, once I've got some other things sorted out, to create a Scholar's Blog "bookshop" which will be hosted on my regular website. It will include links to books about authors as well, such as books of criticism or biography.