Sadar’s Keep: Continues an excellent story

Sadar’s Keep by Midori Snyder

Sadar’s Keep continues the story that began in New Moon.

Three of the four young queens had been found by the end of the first book, and the army that is slowly pulling together around these young woman is starting to find some unusual allies. Midori Snyder focuses the story around the preparations for battle at Sadar’s Keep between the army of the uprising, known as the New Moon, and the Oran military. Sadar’s Keep is also the site of the battle between the current Fire Queen Zorah and her queens 200 years earlier, and Snyder uses that to fill in the back history, making this new fight an echo of the previous battle. And we realize that the previous queens are trying to take control of the current queens and fight through them again, making this fight more than just an echo.

Snyder writes very complex characters in Sadar’s Keep. We realize that Zorah had valid reasons for pursuing her course of action. The new queens are acting like teenage girls, which means they are sporadically getting along with each other, and bickering at other times.

But we also see them growing and maturing as they are forced into some nasty circumstances, and also as they deal with the consequences of the choices they make. It’s nice to see characters reacting to the world around them, rather than having the world change to suit the characters.

Sadar’s Keep keeps up the excellent story from New Moon, and I highly recommend it.