To Light a Candle

The Obsidian Trilogy, Book 2

By: Mercedes Lackey, James Mallory

Narrated by: Susan Ericksen

Length: 34 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

To his own surprise, young Kellen, once the disappointing son of the great Mage who leads the City’s Mage Council, has become a powerful Knight-Mage. Valued for his bravery and his skills as both wizard and warrior, Kellen joins the Elves' war councils. Yet he cannot convince the City of his birth that it is in terrible danger.

Kellen’s sister Idalia, a Wild Mage with great healing ability, has pledged her heart to Jermayan, a proud Elven warrior. Someday Idalia will pay a tragic price for a world-saving work of Wild Magic, but until then, she will claim any joy life can offer her.

Jermayan, who has learned much fighting at Kellen's side and loving the human Idalia, finds that everything changes when he bonds with a dragon while rescuing the Elf Prince and becomes the first Elven Mage in a thousand years. Furious at her enemies' success with the dragon, the Demon Queen attacks in force. Light struggles against Dark, like flickering candle flames buried deep in the shadow of Obsidian Mountain.

Enchanted? Listen to more in the Obsidian Trilogy.

©2004 Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory (P)2010 Tantor

I enjoyed this series

I enjoyed this whole series, well thought out and consistent magic system, different races all have their own customs and histories. There are some things that bothered me, but not enough to really take away from the story line, the relative power and magics of the good and evil races seemed unbalanced. As underpowered as the good races seemed to be, it seems as if the evil races could have easily overrun the good races, and the people that could have balanced that feeling did not seem to have relevant roles in order to actually prevent that from happening; but it all works out ok somehow any way. There are way too many evil minion races that seem way overpowered to also have such great numbers to not have just overrun the good forces they came up against, and yet somehow even though they seem to constantly overwhelm; they are not as devastating as they should have been for the numbers and relative power they did have. The dragon was not as powerful as I would have hoped -I liked how the bond and magic worked for the dragon and its bonded mage- but I would have expected it to be fierce and dangerous even when it did lose its ability to use magic. The dragon should have dominated the lessor creatures it came up against easily, it should have taken bigger and tougher foes to keep it occupied and effectively neutralize it during battles.

All the things that bothered me were very minor compared to the richness of the story and the great character development, so this is still a definite must read for any one that likes fantasy.

Mispronunciation

I would have enjoyed it more if the occasional mispronunciations (it's gee-us, not gesh) hadn't kept pulling me out of the story.

good read no third book

the 1st 2 books are very entertaining but the 3rd isnt avaiable . .......not cool

more of the same

All of these books are the same story, the authors found a model that worked and stuck with it. I will say though, that even if it is repetitive it is very good.

Great book

I love the story almost as good as the first in the series the performance was actually pretty good I enjoyed the readers dialogue but the editing involved was horrible.

Outstanding narrator for a favorite book

This trilogy is one of my favorite series of books of all time. Like some do with LOTR, I read these or parts of them every year. This second book is even better than the first. The characters develop into people who's company I greatly enjoy and miss when I've finished reading. There is so much going on, so many unexpected events, and a great deal of wisdom. When I first began listening and found the narrator to be female, I was upset, because the main character is male, although young. But Susan Ericksen has such a range of voices and command over intonation, tone of voice, and the personalities of the characters, she expresses perfectly not just a teenage boy, but his wise older sister, a snarky male unicorn, a cantankerous male dragon, a host of stoic and high-cultured elves, arrogant middle-aged politicians, centaurs of all ages, and a race of demons - all separate and so varied that it's easy to picture each character and identify who's speaking. She's made my enjoyment of these wonderful books even greater.

Excellent as usual Mercedes, James & Susan!

This was truly a remarkable work and I look forward to the 3rd book in the series!

Great story line!

James and Mercedes do a great job interweaving multiple plots to make this a story you want to follow to the end!

Great book, Audio has Hiccups

The story is absolutly amazing with tons of action anticipation and surprises. There have been a couple audio issues though with repeating sentances and hiccups but nothing that really impacted the understanding of the story.

Excellent narrator

This narrator has so many voices! She is truly impressive, every character is distinct and separate. She brings out the author’s humor beautifully. This is an excellent story that I picture as a movie every time I read it! The audible version is a step in the right direction.