In spite of the weaknesses of the books, I really like the world of Lyra and the characters. In this book, I particularly liked that the heroin is a 36 mother of two. ( )

This is a reissue of one of Wrede's older books, one of the five Lyra novels from the 1980s.

It's centuries after the Wars of Binding, and some institutions and customs are starting to break down. The Estarren alliance is beginning to come apart, with new polities and alliances encroaching around its edges. The Magic Seekers, ruthlessly determined to force the non-human races and human magic users to give their magic to them, are becoming a serious threat.

Kayl Larrinar, innkeeper in the small town of Copeham, lives quietly with her two children, mourning her late husband but living a happy and orderly life with her children, her friends, and her business.

Then Corrana, a sorceress of the Sisterhood of the Silver Star, asks for a room, and Kayl knows her life is about to change--again. The Sisterhood is threatened, and the key seems to lie in a secret expedition that Kayl was a part of, fifteen years ago, when she was one of the Sisterhood herself. Kayl resists, but when another member of that ill-fated expedition, the Varnan wizard Glyndon, appears, also bearing a warning, Kayl succumbs. She packs up her children, her sword, and her late husband's rod, and sets off with Corrana and Glyndon to confront her past.

The past, we learn, takes the form of the Twisted Tower, the deaths of several members of the expedition, and Kayl's departure from the Sisterhood after a dispute about how the disaster would be reported. The most unsettling thing for Kayl is not returning to the Star Hall, or seeing again Barthelmy, the only other surviving member of Kayl's Star in the sisterhood as well as, with Kayl and Glyndon, one of the three surviving members of the expedition. It's the discovery that their memories of what happened are not reliable, that important things happened that have been blocked from their memories.

In order to survive the building crisis, Kayl has to confront the Sisterhood, the Twisted Tower and what lies within, her own memories, and her feelings about both the Sisterhood and Glyndon. Wrede deals effectively with Kayl's conflicted feelings, the conflicts within the Sisterhood itself, and the political complexities that surround them.

Highly recommended. ( )

Wrede writes female characters who are strong, smart, complex, and believable! Kayl is no exception. Having walked out on the Sisterhood 15 years prior, she is now thrust back into the heart of the very issue that caused her to walk away. She's forced to face the reason she ran away, the reason she never went back - and the reason she failed. Watching her change and grow made the story for me. Granted, they were some cheesy parts, but they were few. And the Twisted Tower wasn't the real focus - it was Kayl's journey to make peace with her past and her future. The magic was fun and the world building solid - and given that this is a few 1,000 years before Daughter of Witches, if was neat to see that matching references. This is a vital part of Wrede's Lyra Chronicles, worth reading, if only for the fantastic female lead. ( )

Caught in Crystal is the fourth book in Patricia Wrede’s Lyra series and picks up ten years after Kayl’s husband Kevran has died. Kayl is struggling to maintain her inn and raise to two children; the work is difficult but she and her children are safe and the secret of her past life as a member of the Sisterhood of Stars is still firmly buried in the past. That is, until the day Corrana, a tall dark-haired woman with a silver star on her robes walks into Kayl’s inn and tells the innkeeper it is time to return to the Twisted Tower. Suddenly, Kayl’s past comes crashing down around her and she finds herself on the run with her children, a wizard, and Corrana and headed toward a fate that is sixteen years in the making.

For six months, Kayl and her companions travel from her small town back to Kith Alunel a place Kayl thought and hoped she would never have to return or expose her children too. One of my very, very few complaints about this novel is the long journey Kayl and her companions undertake. Nearly the entire first half of the novel is occupied with this journey and at times the story has a tendency to drag. To be completely honest, in most books with such a slow pace, I would have given up but Wrede’s characters are so good, especially Kayl, that I never could bring myself to stop reading. I was sincerely drawn to Kayl and wanted to know how her story ends. In fact, Kayl is Caught in Crystal’s greatest strength: she is physically strong, a well-trained fighter; she is a master strategist; she is fiercely loyal to those who have earned it; and absolutely endearing when dealing with her children.

The story really begins to pick up in the second half of the novel: Kayl has resigned herself to the fact that she must confront her past with the Sisterhood head on; she must return to the ominous Twisted Tower; she must accept that her children are as involved as she is and; she must acknowledge her feelings for her old friend, the wizard Glyndon. As the group makes their way to the Twisted Tower the reader learns more of the secrets carried by each member of the travelling party and their ulterior motives. There is also a significant amount of action in this part of the novel which, when coupled with all the secrets, makes for a swift ride to the dramatic finish. There is magic and fighting and palpable tension that makes the end well worth the slow pace of the first part of the novel.

The bottom line: I never like reading a series out of order but this book can be easily read as a stand-alone. The characters and plot are both strong and based on this, I have decided to take a look back at the previous books in the Lyra series. Wrede has an easy writing style and excellent skill with dialogue that can satisfactorily carry the reader through the slower parts of the novel. While this book is classified as a Young Adult novel, it will certainly appeal to an older reading audience as well; especially those who are partial to the light fantasy genre. ( )

3.5 rounded up - because it's Patricia C. Wrede.

While the Lyra books do constitute a series, as I understand it and as I remember it they are also each standalone novels. Put together, they relate the long history of Lyra; taken separately, they are perfectly readable each unto itself.

I've always been a huge fan of Patricia C. Wrede, and I liked this book, a lot. But I didn't love it as much as I expected. There was nothing huge, but a handful of small things - like Kayl, on watch over her camp at night, sitting and staring into the fire while she tries to order her thoughts, thereby destroying her night vision completely. It specifically says she is watching the flames - so anyone could have come up behind her and knifed her in the back, or made as much noise as they wanted approaching because, no longer able to see in the dark at all, she would have been slow to react. It was just a tiny scene - but so much is made of the fact that she is a highly trained elite warrior that this tiny scene left a huge impact.

Another small thing that irritated: a mention that someone who had been wounded spent four days in bed. The reason this annoyed me was that there were no beds then and there; the group was living rough in a campsite, so what he actually did was probably spend four days kept immobile in a nest of blankets and other people's cloaks on a pallet they'd cobbled together, on the ground.

One aspect of the story that bugs me a little is one for which it is, itself, not really to blame; it's more the mass of fiction in general, not just this writer's and not just fantasy. It is a touch of the Mary Sues, in which there is one character who the opposite gender wants and the same gender wants to be. Kayl was very happily married to Kevran, who is some years dead as this story begins. It very quickly becomes clear that her neighbor and friend, Jirod, quietly loves her and would be very happy to fill the role of second husband. Then Kevran's old comrade Glyndon comes back into her life, and it quickly becomes obvious to the reader if not to Kayl that he loves her. It's useful for the plot, of course, for the attachments to be formed, or Glyndon's at least; it might have been more realistic and believable had Jirod simply been a solid friend and neighbor (perhaps with a hopeful eye toward bedding her). My complaint is that this seems to be the situation in a too-large number of books I've read lately – a symptom, maybe, of a sort of sharp focus in which the main female character of the story is just about the only female character (in this case the only available adult human female).

It would be interesting to have a little more information on Kayl's past as an innkeeper with her husband. Kevran was a Varnan, and because of past wars Varnans are generally viewed with the sort of automatic hatred as Germans and Japanese were in the 40's. It might have slowed down the story, but without it I can't help wondering how they managed; setting up shop in the small village of Copeham, even without much of an accent, I would expect to be significant.

Actually, that leads to another point: this might have benefited by being told in two books, or one book told in two discrete parts, rather than being set in the later timeline covering past events in extensive flashbacks. Characters' deaths would have had more impact if they were unexpected, rather than remembered; it seemed as though there was a tremendous amount going on in that earlier journey, from Kayl's introduction to the love(s) of her life to the beginning of the end of the Sisterhood's power, that begged for better exposition.

It is a well-told story, with likeable and believable characters. I like Kayl and the life she's carved out for herself, and the way her story is told. I like Bryn and the Wyrd, and want more about them. Glyndon's combination of brashness and I like the relationship between Kayl and her past, and with the Sisterhood; I like that they're a bit bad-ass, and very few are the warm and motherly types that are the go-to archetype for female mages (especially Coranna – I like that she's an unapologetic bitca). I even like Mark and Dara, Kayl's children – they read as genuine children without crossing the line into "annoying and should be deleted", if perhaps a bit too here-and-now in their language; they sometimes sound like they're about to ask for a Coke and ten bucks to go to the movies. (I believe it was Mark who referred to Coranna as "weird", which felt very 20th-21st century and also clashed with the race Wyrd.) There are plenty of nits to be picked - I think this is far from Ms. Wrede's best work, but still very enjoyable. ( )