Predictably, next in my reading was Gryphon in Glory, the second book in the trilogy. I haven’t read it as many times (because for a long time I did not know that The Crystal Gryphon had a sequel) so it’s not as much of a remembered favorite.
I remember how Andre Norton enraptured me as a pre-teen, and then she does it again. I am most certainly not wasting my time with this dive into the world I have always loved.
Thoughts from Gryphon in Glory… They didn’t have a direct quest in mind. Things kept changing on them, and there wasn’t one overarching goal. Yet I loved the book. Not as much as The Crystal Gryphon, but I did enjoy it.
The magic doesn’t have one big system of rules. Most of it is explained as “beyond hope of human knowledge.” A few “rules” are dropped here and there, but not enough for anyone to try and recreate the system. That’s still not a bad thing.
What else about the book? Well, the final battle isn’t really prefaced by much. I think there’s one encounter with the guy they end up fighting, and that in a dream where the protagonist only hears others talk, and then is rescued. Which only lends credence to the idea that in the hands of a master, the deadliest mistakes are only bumps on the road.
ETA: Also, I’ve decided to add some tags so when I get to the end I can look at what I’ve got. So that’s why the gender of the author and the genre will now appear below.