Mistress Of The Night: A Book Review

I finished another book on my lunch hour at work today, this one a Xmas present from my brother. Mistress of the Night by Don Bassingthwaite & Dave Gross is a Forgotten Realms novel, and part of a quartet of stand-alone stories called The Priests. Other volumes in this series include Lady of Poison and Queen of the Depths. I have also read the fourth book Maiden of Pain, before I started writing this blog. Each book in the series concentrates on a servant of one of the many gods of the Realms. Oddly though in this case, while the book focuses on a priestess of Selûne, it is named for her church's arch enemy, the goddess Shar.

Shar and Selûne are the two oldest deities of the Forgotten Realms setting, twin sisters who have battled since before time, their eternal conflict in turn creating the other gods of magic, war, death and more in the process. The book includes a wonderful poem that nicely details their enmity and I quote it in its entirety here:

From the shadows of chaos, two sisters are born,
One bright Selûne, the other dark Shar.
A harmonious balance, soon to be torn,
When Selûne gifts life with flame from afar!

At the dawn of the world, two sisters contest,
Over dark, over light, over life, over death.
Shar seeks the void and with shadows coalesced,
Snuffs Selûne's bright lights and with them her breath!

In the twilight of battle, one sister falters,
But Selûne hurls magic with desperate power.
From two sisters, one child the balance alters-
Mystryl's aid to Selûne ends Shar's dark hour!

Selûne, Moonmaiden - Shar, Mistress of Night
Two sisters divided by one sisters spite

The book focuses on Feena Archwood, a rustic prietess who is summoned (very much against her will) to Moonshadow Hall in the port city of Yhaunn, by the High Moonmistress Dhauna Myritar. No sooner has Feena arrived, then she is named as Dhauna's successor, to her shock and the outrage of the two senior priests of the Hall, Velsinore and Mifano, both of whom believe that the position should be theirs. For her part Feena hates cities, she is a village priestess and she cannot imagine why Dhauna has done this.

Dhauna is being driven slowly mad by a series of powerful dreams that seem to warn of heresy in the clergy, and is spending her days searching through the Hall’s archives for a clue to some secret hidden in the church’s past. To make matters worse for Feena, on the night she arrived in Yhaunn, a man was found mutilated as though by a wild beast in the city slums... and Feena is a werewolf! She is however a born lycanthrope, rather than an afflicted one, and thus can control herself in animal form. So she knows she didn't cause the man's death, but she had snuck out into the city to prowl and clear her head that night, after the suprising events of the day, and so she starts investigating.

The character of Feena is very well written, she is a woman who would rather be anywhere and doing anything, but what she finds herself doing. She wants a simple life, and finds herself thrust into the limelight, a role to which she isn't suited, but must adapt too and fast! It is very easy to empathise with her situation, and a testament to the skills of the authors that they conveyed very well, just how trapped she feels.

The other characters in the book are not so well written though. Both Velsinore and Mifano are very two-dimensional, and Julith (Dhauna’s aide, who is tasked with helping Feena), never really evolves past a humble secretary. The villain of the piece: Variance Amatick (a priestess of Shar), is far too blatant in her manipulations, to be a believable servant of a goddess whose cult is extremely secretive. The other major character is Keph Thingoleir, a dissatisfied nobleman from a family of wizards. He himself has no magical potential and is resentful of this. His petty jealousy is taken advantage of by Variance, in her mission to recover a long lost book that is sacred to Shar. Keph is fairly well written, and while he is stupid enough to fall in with the cult, he soon realises that he is way out of his depth.

The plot whilst convoluted, is very engaging and it kept me guessing as to what was going to happen next right until the end. There are not many stories that manage to do that! I’m going to give this novel 4/5 as a result. It is a shame really that there aren’t any more books in this series to read, as I’ve enjoyed all four of the Priests novels.