Unnatural Issue
An Elemental Masters Series, No 6
Mercedes Lackey

DAW Books Inc.
June 5, 2012/ ISBN 978-0756407261
Fantasy
Amazon

Reviewed by P.L. Blair

Beautiful Mix of Fantasy, Reality

Unnatural Issue is the first book I've read in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series.

It won't be the last.

Lackey's tale of a young woman abandoned by her father, who blames her for her mother's death in childbirth,, is beautifully interwoven with the reality of England on the eve of World War I and the fantastical fae who seek to protect the island nation.

Susanne Whitestone is the daughter, a child of two powerful Earth Masters, mages, who control the element of Earth. Her father, Richard, was away when Susanne was born and returned too late to save his beloved wife, Rebecca. He despises the child, blaming her for Rebecca's death, leaving her to the servants of Whitestone Manor to raise, while he retreats into a sectioned-off wing of his home to brood and nurse his hatred.

Susanne nevertheless grows into a loved and loving young woman for she, too, is an Earth Master, and she has found a tutor in Robin, the Robin, Robin Goodfellow, aka the Puck. He has taught Susanne practices that no mortal could, and she uses her powers to do what her father has not for all the years of her life, to nurture the estate beyond the manor's walls and keep it healthy and thriving.

Richard meanwhile has become hard, cold, and obsessed with the idea of restoring his dead wife to life. For that purpose he has turned to the dark art of necromancy. He needs an appropriate vessel for Rebecca's spirit, a young woman as similar in appearance to her as he can find. As he broods and seeks the vessel he needs, he realizes such a young woman is as close at hand as his own manor.

Because Susanne is twenty-one,, the age at which Rebecca died,, and the image of her mother.

Lackey weaves a powerful tale, from the power and poetry of the fae and the Yorkshire countryside in which Susanne is born, to the gritty reality of London in the early 1900s, to the hell of war in the trenches in World War I. It's almost a cliché to refer to a book as a page-turner these days, but in the case of Unnatural Issue it's true.

This is a book that's hard to put down, and I found myself looking forward to every opportunity to pick it up and resume the story. Lackey is my kind of writer,; one who pulls you into her tale, then disappears, letting the story and the characters speak for themselves.

It's only after you put the book aside that you become aware of the author and what a powerful tale-teller she is.

I highly recommend Unnatural Issue. As for me, I'm going searching for more of Lackey's books in this incredible series.