Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon

I read this series a long time ago but when I was putting books back on the shelf after moving this summer, I realized I had lost all but one in the series. Sounded like a damn fine time to revisit the series and see if it was as good as I remembered.

Rhapsody is a half-elf Singer trying to outrun her past when she runs into a couple of monsters: Grunthor, a huge, green-skinned, sharp-fanged, mountain bristling with weapons, and the Brother, a preeminent assassin who can hone in and track the heartbeat of anyone in the world. They too are on the run and rescue/abduct Rhapsody for her abilities. Grunthor and the Brother are seeking to escape the evil F'dor, one of the elemental races, and to do so they travel through space and time along the root of the world tree. When they emerge, it's to discover that their homeland has been destroyed and they are millennia away from when they began their journey. The Brother, renamed Achmed the Snake, sets about reforming some of the scattered Bolg tribes and uncovering many treasures of what used to be their people. But the F'dor also escaped to the new world and Rhapsody finds herself and her companions drafted into fulfilling a prophecy to destroy evil once and for all.

This is a hugely ambitious novel in terms of scope and characterization. Different fantasy races with incredible elemental powers are introduced, there's time travel, and magic, and good and evil, with well-rounded, characters who are powerful but still have their own particular blindspots and flaws. It's a sweeping epic that could never have been contained in only one book. This is a true fantasy classic and if you haven't read it, you've done yourself a disservice.

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