Doppelganger, Marie Brennan.  Yet another entry promoted as part of the ballooning "paranormal" genre, Brennan's novel is a mix of RPG medieval fantasy and witchcraft that successfully works one idea through to completion.   Running with the idea that everyone has a double, Brennan supposes that witches in her world can't practice magic if the doppelganger still lives. 

Miryo, a recently graduated witch, discovers she must kill her double in order to come into her powers.  Mirage, the double, is a successful hunter in her own right, on the trail of a political assassin.  It's a decent story, though not a terribly original one, but my attention was kept by the changing points of view.

For all that I enjoyed it, the book is not without flaws - the slightly generic time period and prototypical fantasy map mean that very little sense of place is gathered from the novel itself.  We get the same description of inns from town to town, and no sense of space given how quickly and unrealistically Mirage and her partner move about.  The glossary in the back is mostly unnecessary - all of Brennan's terminology could be extrapolated from context, and as I reader I prefer being shown a world.  Still, it's an excellent first novel, and there's easily space to flesh out the world and its politics in further series entries. (The back offers a preview of the next title, so a sequel seems forthcoming.)

Read September 2006