Your Humble Blogger worked his way to The Spellcoats, the third of the four Dalemark books, except I think there are more, now. It wouldn’t surprise me, anyway. Unlike the previous two, this Dalemark is a world with magic fairly common and widely understood to exist and to work.
The interesting thing about this book—and I don’t think it fully works—is that the text of the book itself is a significant plot point. Our Hero writes the text, or rather weaves the words into two spellcoats, as the story progresses. She writes about doing the weaving, and she writes about deciding what to weave, and since the coats are spells, she writes about the effects of the weaving. As the events in the story she is weaving catch up with the weaving, there’s a tension (no pun intended) built up that could, presumably, have either a terrific payoff or an intensely annoying cliffhanger, with the story cut off just as we are about to find out if the spell is a lady or a tiger.
Unfortunately, as with much of the Dalemark stuff, the magic is too powerful, in the end, for the tension to work just right. When it comes down to it, Superman just does the Superman thing, and that’s the end of that.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
There’s only one more Dalemark book, which wraps everything up together in a silver bow. I wouldn’t bother with it. It’s not as good as the other three (which, given your not-terribly positive reviews of the other three, doesn’t bode well for your enjoyment). I’ll tell you more in email if you like.