Four & Twenty Blackbirds – Mercedes Lackey

Now I reviewed the other books in this series. I never could find a copy of this book but I had some luck. Some friends of mine bought a boxful of books and this one was in it. Fortunately, they were kind enough to lend it to me so I finally got to read it. 

From the summary on the back of the book: “...Tal Rufen is just a simple constable. But he really cares about his job, and when one of these murder/suicides happens on his beat he becomes obsessed. His superiors don't care -- the victims will never be missed, and their murderers are already justly dead. But every instinct Tal Rufen has cries out that he has seen only one small piece of a bigger and much nastier puzzle” That is all I can really say about the book’s plot without giving everything away. As any genre of book, this one leaves much to be desired. The mystery isn’t much of a mystery if you’ve read The Lark and the Wren (the first book in the series). I figured out who the murderer was in the first two chapters. As fantasy, there isn’t much magic or other races. The only spell that is actually performed and not just talked about is by the murderer to control the victim. There is a Haspur, the race of bird-men from previous books but his scenes are few and far between and while critical to the story, he is treated more like a plot device than an actual character. As a book belonging to a series about musicians, there are only the vaguest references to the Free Bards or even the Bardic Guild and characters from other books.

I had hoped that, like The Lark and The Wren, the book would change directions; the first half being Rune trying to qualify for the Bardic guild and the second half being her adventures with the free bards. I figured if it was so obvious who the murderer was within the first few chapters, then the second half of this more than 400 page book would have to do with the budding romance/crisis of faith that the Arch Bishop started having because of Tal Rufen or the building of the school they talked about several times or any of the multitude of things mentioned in what turned out to be throwaway conversations that might as well never have happened. They recapped the murders and the trail Rufen follows to Kingsford, four times. Four times! They have the exact same conversation with three different individuals and then they have a group session where they throw out the same ideas they had 50 pages ago. All in all, if this book had been half the length, it would have been an engaging story. As it stands, it was a whole bunch of repetition. It was worth reading once but I doubt I’ll ever feel the need to read it again.