The Alchemist of Souls by Anne Lyle

Anne Lyle’s first novel, The Alchemist of Souls, is a big tankard of Elizabethan ale, foaming with intrigue, hidden identities, secret societies, treachery, plots, swordplay and magic. I can’t think of a much better way to spend a few hours than to curl up with this book.

Maliverny Catlyn is half English and half French, but a loyal English citizen. He has been a soldier, but now is reduced to taking jobs guarding warehouses and teaching merchants’ sons swordplay. Mal’s situation is more desperate than most, because he has to pay for the care of his twin brother Sandy, who languishes in Bedlam. Still, when Mal is pressed into the Queen’s service to be a bodyguard to the skrayling ambassador, he has serious second thoughts.

The skraylings are from the New World, and they bring marvelous inventions that look like magic. Skraylings have tattooed fa... Read More

The Merchant of Dreams by Anne Lyle

Anne Lyle continues her Elizabethan sword-and-cipher fantasy series NIGHT’S MASQUE with Book Two, The Merchant of Dreams. This book picks up almost a year after the end of The Alchemist of Souls, and follows Mal Catlyn and his friends on their adventures, which take place mostly on the ocean or in the city of Venice.

In Lyle’s universe, the New World is populated by skraylings, a non-human race who reincarnate and who use magic. The skraylings have a trade agreement with England, but they are distrusted, hated and even hunted down by some humans who think they are demons. Most people do not realize that a skrayling whose body is killed can reincarnate into, or “possess,” a human. Mal and his twin brother Sandy, who already share a soul, are both possessed by the skrayling Erishen, although Sandy is more of a host than Mal. In England and elsewhere in Europe, long-l... Read More