Canadian writer Sean Russell spent years purposefully and successfully avoiding the Tolkien-type of grand fantasy that has ongoing characters and plot elements. He had two persistent ideas, however, that eventually led him to attempt a fantasy on a large scale. The first idea derived from Huckleberry Finn was of a group of characters traveling down a river by raft. The second was of two families fighting for power, somewhat akin to the Montagues and the Capulets. When Russell realized these two ideas could be linked, he found himself with the basis for a traditional fantasy, one that would have a motley group of characters traveling through strange and distant lands on a quest to save their homeland. The Swans’ War series was launched last year with The One Kingdom. The second entry, newly released, is The Isle of Battle, and it includes a dense four-page section, “What Went Before,” to help new readers to catch up.

As befits the mid-book in a trilogy, The Isle of Battle is a dark book. The land between the mountains is on the brink of war as the two ruling families (the Rennes and the Wills) use politics, games and marriage to try to take the throne. At the start, Elise Wills has thrown herself in the River Wynnd rather than give herself up to a political marriage. But she has not died, as her broken-hearted father and friends suppose; she has made a deal with Sianon, a nagar or dark river spirit, to live on and share her body and mind.

The Isle of Battle is mostly questing and chasing, as various groups of warriors hunt the three nagar: Sianon; Hafydd, Sianon’s murderous brother; and Sainth, their half-brother, who inhabits the body of a wanderer named Alaan. The chase leads into lands that exist side by side with the land between the mountains, where the only hope of exit is Sainth and Sainth is very much in danger from Hafydd and his men.

Russell keeps the characters moving, the tension high and the quest arduous. The politics are complicated, the relationships even more so. When one young lord swears he will spy for his enemies in the hope of future peace (and familial gain), it is difficult to remember who he can safely talk to, and who he can’t.

The Isle of Battle will please Russell’s earlier readers and bring him many more. He has taken up the mantle of a traditional fantasy writer and is producing strong, highly readable tales. Gavin J. Grant reads, writes and publishes science fiction in Brooklyn.

Like every world-class (“universe-class”?) story set on a distant planet ages hence, the true marvel of Jim Grimsley’s novel The Ordinary lies not in its technological wonders or its fully imagined alien landscapes and cultures, though there are these aplenty. The magic radiates, rather, from the way we identify with the characters, who see and feel things that flatly had no existence before the author conjured them into being.

“Magic” is just the right word for this story of conflicts and hidden connections between technology and wizardry. When Jedda Martele travels through the strange new Twil Gate from Senal to Irion from her technologically advanced, war-ridden home world to a world where there seem to be no sophisticated machines of any kind she believes she is going to a simple place as a simple trader and linguist. But the goods she acquires in magical Irion and the language she eventually learns there so far exceed her original conception that she must, in the end, trade far more than her textiles: She must exchange one idea of reality for another, surrender her former understanding of language for a new knowledge of the power of words.

In Irion (the site of Grimsley’s fantasy novel, Kirith Kirin, winner of the 2000 Lambda Literary Award), language wed to music has developed into a kind of magic that can change consciousness and alter the course of events. The ambassadors from Senal (for whom Jedda serves as translator) arrogantly presume that they can overwhelm Irion with their military might, but they have not reckoned the overwhelming force of Ironian magic wielded so effortlessly by the beautiful Queen Malin.

Jedda and Malin are women of different worlds, beings of different orders yet they are destined for each other. For many readers, the Sapphic grace of this love affair will be one more way in which Grimsley has opened a new, alternative reality of unanticipated beauty. Their “ordinary” love that is, ordained for every possible twist of fate literally transcends time, for Irion is not only the name of a world, but the name of its most powerful wizard, a wondrous demigod who sweeps Jedda through time to help him “change the sky” and discover the source of his own magic. Grimsley’s own wizardry could be put in almost the same terms: He sweeps us through time and space and changes our sky. By bringing two alien worlds together, he brings them both to us. It is a gift of unearthly power. Michael Alec Rose writes from Nashville.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel, Forty Signs of Rain, is a convincing story of weather disasters in the not-too-distant future. Already a Hugo and Nebula award winner for The Years of Rice and Salt and his Mars trilogy, Robinson pulls his latest tale straight from the headlines. As a result of global warming, the Arctic ice shelf is melting at an alarming rate and millions of coastal dwellers are in danger.

At the center of the action are Charlie and Anna Quibler, a typical Washington, D.C., power couple. Charlie is a stay-at-home dad who works part time as a science advisor to a popular senator, and Anna is a full-time researcher for the National Science Foundation. Charlie and Anna are struggling to get the government to take global warming seriously while the administration’s only concern is surviving the next election.

Anna’s co-worker, Frank, is a scientist who prides himself on his emotional detachment, but he loses his comfortably distanced view of the world when he meets a group of Buddhist diplomats from a low-lying island nation. The monks blow Frank’s mind by pointing out that a single-minded devotion to one aspect of life (such as science) makes the mind unbalanced. Frank is unexpectedly open to this life-changing idea.

Forty Signs of Rain is all about balance, whether it’s love or work, spirituality or politics. There are flood warnings throughout (beginning with the Biblical reference in the title) but the blinkered D.C. politicians won’t pay attention until the rising water is lapping at their doorways. Robinson skips between the domestic, scientific and political spheres without missing a beat and delivers a hot-topic page-turner that leaves the reader gasping and stranded at high tide, eager for the next book from this science fiction master. Gavin J. Grant writes from Northampton, Massachusetts.