Thrice Bound

By: Roberta Gellis

Narrated by: Kirsten Potter

When Hekate's tyrannical father - a powerful mage - makes one demand too many, Hekate flees to the Caves of the Dead, where her father's magic cannot reach. But the Caves are protected by a spell of terror and revulsion. To remain there without going mad, Hekate reluctantly takes on a second binding - to the Caves themselves - which will kill her if she fails to satisfy the forces that rule them. Hekate cannot loosen her new bonds until she completely escapes her father's baleful influence. But when she learns that her more-than friend in the Caves is cursed, never to be able to escape, Hekate willingly becomes thrice bound to free him.

©2001 Roberta Gellis (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Mixed feelings

First, Kirsten Potter did well reading this.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I've enjoyed this author's medieval mysteries, and as I like fantasy, I had high hopes.

It's odd, because the things I disliked here are exactly the things I generally want to see more of in fantasy! A great many fantasy writers just settle details by hand-waving: how did our characters travel? By horse or by foot, no real specifics. How did they do magic? They just did. They studied non-specific wizardly books and performed non-specific rituals.

Gellis does not take the careless way out. She goes to the other extreme. I know far more about the magical system here than I needed to, and far more about travel details. When the heroine enters a building, there's often a description of its layout that's so specific -- hallways, rooms, where the stairs are -- that I'd expect to see it in a locked-room murder mystery; here, it rarely leads to anything.

All writers have tics, but in this case they were too repetitive. There was a point where I started to think that if one more person shook their head in response to their own inner thoughts, I'd lose my mind. I don't blame Gellis for this, though -- that sort of thing is often invisible to the writer. It's what an editor is for.

About halfway through, I nearly quit -- I felt as though I were plodding onward through a deep snow of details that were not in themselves interesting. For example, there was little of the sensuality of everyday life a viewpoint character might take joy in -- the smells, the smiles, the light on a leaf -- and more a practical listing of daily tasks to be accomplished. The pacing is slow. When the two main characters are trapped in a system of caves early on, they seem to be there forever. The relationship between them, obvious to the reader, is opaque to the male and female leads, who persist in misunderstanding each other right to the final pages.

Having said all this... I did in fact keep listening till the end. I did want to see how it came out. I think a great deal of my issues with the book could be solved if it were halved in length.