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Shirley Rousseau Murphy’s second YA epic fantasy series sprawls less than Children of Ynell/World of Ere did, but doesn’t really reach the highs of that series.

That probably has to do with the choice of main character. Teb is closer to Ramad and a good main character, but he’s also a bit central casting for YA epic fantasy. Young (fair enough), male (fine), dispossessed nobility (trope). And with the usual bevy of main character traits; driven, loyal, charismatic. I still greatly prefer the free-spirit Zephy from Ring of Fire.

The trilogy is not directly related to the earlier series, but both mention the idea after each life you get reborn in a new world, so presumably they’re both in the same ‘multiverse’ that concept implies. Instead of time travel, we do get (generally off-screen) universe-hopping as the there is a place that connects to countless other worlds.

The good guys get magical powers again, the titular bards bond with dragons (presumed borrowing from Pern here, but this is a pure ‘destined’ bond—there is one particular dragon for a bard and vice versa, and if they never meet…). And bardic magic lets them show people the past… and gives them an instinctual knowledge of that past.

The bad guys look generally human (pale skin, etc), apparently don’t age, and psychically feed off of pain and suffering. They’re not shown as having any redeeming features, though they are fully intelligent. A nice, safe, “other” that is easy to see as evil. (And to be fair, there’s not going to be any good way to live with that.) There are other evil creatures from other worlds, which threw this one out of balance, but they’re the ones currently in charge. They also see wiping out knowledge of the past as part of how to cement their power. There’s some good themes that could be explored with that, but we don’t really get past the surface level.

We also have a number of intelligent animals (foxes, cats, and otters are the main ones mentioned). There’s non-intelligent ones too, and they are by no means anthropomoric/furry in form. They’re animals, but they are intelligent and can speak. This is more of a borrowing from Narnia, but I don’t think they’re meant to be larger than their non-intelligent cousins like they are there.

Nightpool (book 1) has an in medias res opening, but we go back to the initial part after the first chapter. (This is something I’ve grown to dislike.) And the book is largely Teb’s growth towards an active (young) adult, ready to work towards a defeat of the people who have taken his kingdom. This, of course, ends up as a side effect of the series as a whole, as the scope quickly encompasses the entirety of this battered world. (At some point during the initial campaigns of evil, something caused the sea levels to rise, leaving islands and small continents where large continents were. This is never explained.)

It is a much more cohesive story than Children of Ynell, and much more compact in time. But, we lose some of the themes that helped Ring of Fire be so good. Generally, this is good YA fantasy that feels even older than it is (more of a ’60s-’70s feel than mid-’80s), with some good character-focused writing. But past that, it isn’t all that special either.