Books: Rhapsody

Rhapsody
By Elizabeth Haydon
Copyright 1999
656 pages

This is the first in a high fantasy series.

Rhapsody is a Namer, which is a person with powers over the names of things. If she sings the right names and words to plants, for example, they grow big and strong.

She gets into trouble and meets up with Grunthor, who is some kind of giant-kind person, and Achmed, an assassin. They all run away because Achmed and Grunthor are in trouble, too. They end up underground and 1400 years later, after traveling through fire in the center of the earth, rise up to discover a new world.

Achmed decides to become a king in a forgotten land while Rhapsody adopts a lot of motherless children and attempts to find her place. Grunthor follows Achmed.

There are bad guys, flashbacks, gods playing with time, magic, myth, etc. etc. Amazon has a long review of the book and so I shan't go into the plot any more.

I will recommend it, though, to fantsy readers who want a long read on a cold night. I have the next book in the series here to read, but I will not be delving into it until I have the time to savor it.

4 stars