Shatterglass

I love Tamora Pierce's Trickster stories, but I haven't been so keen on her other stuff. It's YA fantasy, which I generally like, with gutsy girls and very well described settings - this one is so Xena-like, it's got to be faux Ancient Greece. A young mage bumps into a glassworker who has been struck by lightening and has got magic unawares. At the same time a murderer is going around killing women in the entertainment industry. So the mage and the glassworker team up to solve the mystery.

It's not bad. The writing's good enough, and the setting's interesting, and the characters are well-realised. It's slightly slow, as more and more people get murdered, and when the culprit is found, it's some complete stranger so it's not particularly exciting. There is a big change in the glassworker, but not a great alteration is anyone else, so mostly by the end of the story you don't feel you've travelled very far. It's a good, but not a great book. I'm just hanging out for the last one in the Trickster series.