Source

Amberlight #3

by Sylvia Kelso

After their shattering departure from Amberlight, Telluir House has begun to rebuild in the mountain village of Iskarda - but even there, River politics remain a threat. When Tellurith and her consort receive the precious yet harrowing gift of a possible new form of the qherrique, only one solution offers protection for Iskarda and the qherrique both: leave Iskarda. Find the River's Source.The qherrique itself chooses Tellurith a company, of husbands, lovers, old friends and new, and their passage upRiver is accompanied by upheavals and catastrophe wherever they pass. Nor are things quieter downRiver, or n Iskarda itself. Before she can return, everything Tellurith has worked for threatens to crumble, as war flares along the River, among the fall and liberation of states, including Amberlight. It takes revelation, sacrifice, great loss, and an impossible hope's fulfillment, to bring Tellurith and her company safely home from the Source, to a River that will never be the same again.

Genres: Fantasy

Kindle Edition

First published September 13, 2010

About the author

Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia. She writes fantasy and SF set in analogue or alternate Australian settings. She has published six fantasy novels, two of which, The Moving Water (2006) and Amberlight (2007) were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards.
Her most recent novel-length work is a two-volume contemporary fantasy, the Blackston Gold series, The Solitaire Ghost, and The Time Seam.
Her novella, "Spring in Geneva," a riff on Frankenstein , came out from Aqueduct in 2013.
She has also published short stories in Australian and US anthologies, including "The Cretaceous Border" in Neverlands from Susurrus Press, "The Sharp-Shooter" in New Ceres Nights from 12th Planet Press, and "An Offer You Couldn't Refuse" in Love and Rockets from DAW. She lives in a house with a lot of trees but no cats.

Reviews

[Warren Rochelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Source, a worthy sequel to the first two books in Kelso's Riverworld, Amberlight and Riversend, is a multilayered, complex tale of love, family (in its many permutations), war, politics, friendship, and the supernatural. It continues the adventures of familiar characters, such as Telllurith, Head of her House,who has fled from the wreckage of Amberlight to Iskarda, with her two consorts, Sarth, and Alkhes, and others loyal to her, seeking to construct a new gender-equal society. With them has now come Tanekhet, a lord of the empire, who also seeks a new life, and a better world based on changed relations between men and women.

Now, Tellurith and company has been sent on a Quest sent by the qherrique, the ongoing mystery of this series--a sentient crystal, a mineral, and psychic and just what does it want? Led by a common dream of a mysterious springhead, they must find the Source of the River, the center of their world. Tanekhet stays behind to act as political advisor in Iskarda, while he struggles to adjust to this new life he has chosen, in which the old and the new continue to clash.

Told in an exchange of thoughtful and painfully honest letters between Tanekhet and Tellurith, this is a story of a journey like no other, There and Back Again (we hope), haunted by war, struggles for liberation, unexpected love, revelation, and loss.

And the world of the River will never be the same.

Highly recommended, a thoughtful, provocative, rich fantasy.