Wizard of the Grove

Tanya Huff begins Wizard of the Grove by telling us of the Mother who created the earth and everything in it. The Mother wanted some company so took a tree and gave it the form of a woman, called a hamadryad, then she gave her new friend some hamadryads of her own out of a few of the other trees. The Mother then went off to create 5 more races, 4 of which became the rarely seen Elder races and 1 who were the humans. Humans soon created their own gods in order to ward off Death, the Mother's son, but ultimately renounced them and learned to embraced Death. The discarded Gods eventually had children who were born from the union of Gods and humans, these children were know as Wizards. The wizards were evil, using their God like powers to corrupt (eww, I'm starting to sound like the back of a book!). Anyway, the wizards did all kinds of bad stuff like create half human half animal Dr. Moreau kind of things, made castles of human remains and created Dragons! Their dragon pets subsequently turned on their masters and killed them all, or so they thought... This is where the bad guy enters the story. Now for the good guy...Half hamadryad half human, Crystal is born and sent away to train to use her powers to defeat the remaining evil wizard. Crystal, being a wizard herself, puts up a great fight and eventually wins. The rest of the book deals with her adventures. In the end... well, I guess I shouldn't give it away.


Tanya Huff did an amazing job of drawing you into the book right off the bat by telling the history of how life was created without boring you to death. I really enjoyed the creativity of the origin of this world. I Also loved her take on Death as a "person". He wasn't really evil as many stories build him to be. And the twist Tanya puts in where he falls in love with Crystal was great. However, I gave this story 3 out of 5 green faeries because I felt that the training that Crystal received from the Elder races would have been interesting to read, maybe even one whole book up to the end of her training. Then writing another book on her journey of finding her mother and defeating the wizard, then another book on her following adventures. I was also disappointed with Crystal herself, I felt that I didn't really get a chance to know her. The last downfall of this book was the ending, I just felt like it left me feeling unfinished and eager for more, maybe because I wish it had been a trilogy.