The Moons of Mirrodin

by Will McDermott

Reviewed by Coral

Memnarch, a Mirai probe re-purposed to serve as Warden over a barren metallic world, has a different sort of plan in mind. Deciding the world is too empty, too sterile he sends out probes to bring back life to populate the world he's named Mirrodin. But, before he is able to begin, he touches a speck of dirt and is infected by a long dormant life form.

Cut to an unknown number of years later, when Mirrodin is full of many metallic skinned races, like the Goblins, Elves and Leonins. Among the planet's population is an Elven huntress names Glissa, who starts to have visions, leading her to think maybe Elves aren't supposed to have metallic skin after all.

Now she's on the run, chased all over the world and back again, while she tries desperately to figure out the truth behind her visions, and where exactly her destiny lies.

The villains/bad guys are pretty standard fare in this book, breaking too many of Peter's Evil Overlord rules to count (example: If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress). So, of course, Glissa is never captured, but anyone who might know anything to help her on her quest is killed before they can share this all too important information with her.

There are too many typos in this book. Missing quotation marks. "Met" instead of "me". Doesn't anybody proofread these things?

Glissa isn't all that bad as far as action heroes and heroines go. Men weren't flinging themselves at her feet the whole book, always appreciated. She is far less demanding and unreasonable than other main characters I've read in this genre, who find themselves captured by someone not quite an enemy, and refuse to give up their weapons when in the presence of a king or leader, all too ready with some ridiculous "request". And then, of course, in these other books they are allowed to waltz into a meeting with a king, weapon in hand, and the king goes and grants all these "requests". I always secretly wish the king would just kill them. I mean, come on, they don't know each other, the king has never met the main character before, why should he just automatically trust him and rush to help him. Trust needs to be earned.

Of course, the "good guy" king in this book ignores the advice of his trusted advisors; why bother with advisors if you never listen to them? Okay, so in this case it's debatable whether or not the advisor's advice was really worth following, but it's the principle of the thing.

All in all the book is an okay outing. Enjoyable despite its faults.

Grade: C