Stranger at the Wedding

by Barbara Hambly

Book Overview

Kyra was preparing for her final wizard test before the Council. But suddenly, something was twisting her magic, weaving sinister portents of doom into even the simplest of her spells. Then she knew... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345380975
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Length: 341 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 1.0" x 4.5"

Customer Reviews

My Favorite Hambly Fantasy Book

This is my favorite of Barbara Hambly's fantasy books. Instead of trouble on a planetary scale (destroy the bad-guy before he destroys the world) we get mayhem and danger on a smaller scale - within a family and family-to-be. Kyra is a 24 year old wizard who is taking her exams within the Citadel of Wizards when she is given omens that her younger sister Alix will die on her wedding night. Despite having been cast out by her father six years before, Kyra goes home to prevent her sister's death. Kyra desperately postpones her sister's wedding again and again while trying to uncover the source of the danger. Meanwhile she remembers how as a teenager she discovered the magic within her, found a wizard to train her, and how all hell broke loose before all was said and done. It's a tainted mental journey, for while Kyra loves magic, she has ample reason to hate it as well. She also finds out two other things: that her sister wants to marry someone other than her fiance - Spens, and that Spens himself is quite a good guy. As with other reviewers, I love the ending. I think it's a fairly happy one. It also gives validity to Kyra's wizarding abilities, which at the start of the book she had reason not to put faith in. My chief problem with Hambly is that sometimes her narrative can get awkward. For example a chapter may start with a person talking, and we don't know who that person is for a few paragraphs. So we skim trying to find out who they are, and don't pay attention to what they are saying. Or another trick of hers, is a person will start talking who hasn't entered the room yet - narratively. So the reader flounders trying to keep up with who is doing and saying what. I find her books easier to read the second time around when I know what will happen. However, I find them very rewarding when I do.

Georgette? Is That You?

Nicely tongue-in-cheek -- until it gets Very Dark -- fantasy/romance, much in the style of Georgette Heyer's Regency romances, though the underlying McGuffin is rather nasty. Kyra the Red would be very typically a Georgette Heyer type heroine -- impetuous, tall, a bit physically clumsy, unrecognising of her own idiosyncratic beauty, unwed at an unfashionably late age -- who has the added misfortune to be a wizard. A wizard, in a world in which the Church begrudgingly allows one wizards' order to exist, with the proviso that the wizards may not use their magic to affect the world outside their walls. To use unauthorised magic is an automatic sentence of death. And Kyra has come home for her younger sister's wedding; home, where she knows she is not welcome in her father's house. Home, where she quickly discovers that someone else is trying to steal away the groom, using illicit purchased magic. Home, where she cleverly and subtly uses her forbidden powers to stall or prevent the wedding. (The mice are a particularly good touch, and Don Maitz's typically lyrical cover refers masterfully to that sequence.) Home, where her prophetic dreams have told her that a curse decrees that her sister's marriage bed will be her deathbed. Home, where she finds herself, uncomfortably, increasingly attracted to her sister's betrothed... who seems (after he gets over thinking her somewhat addled) to return her regard... There can be little doubt that Hambly had Georgette Heyer in mind when writing this -- compare it to, oh, "The Grand Sophy" or "The Masqueraders" -- and i do not think that Heyer would have felt offended by this tribute.

Great combination of fantasy and romance

Kyra's family disowned her when she decided to become a magician. She comes back only because she must -- because she has a foreboding that her sister will die on her wedding night.Working magic in secret, Kyra tries to postpone the wedding long enough to solve the mystery. Yet something completely unexpected happens -- she finds herself drawn to her sister's fiance, Spens! (Though at first glance he seems like a stout merchant with bad fashion sense, Spens is a great character.)My biggest problem with this book is the structure of the plot. Important information about the past is withheld, and when the reader learns that information, we pretty much figure out who did it. But I enjoyed this book so much that I didn't mind.I've heard Barbara Hambly's other fantasy books are even better. Now, I can't wait to read them.I gave this book Desert Isle Keeper status at All About Romance.

Original fantasy

This book is refreshing, because it's not another "fight the dark evil god" too common in fantasy. The story is about a predicted curse, and who have done it ? And how to dodge it, too. The romance is present, but not too important. It's not a love book, but a mistery one.

This book is great.

This book is about an outcast who is home to see her sisters wedding, but gets mixed up in magic mayhem. The family is afraid of her magic powers, and her father is permanantly mad at her for being a wizard. And She seems to be falling in love with her sisters fiance. And her sister doesn't want to marry her fiance. And on top of all that it seems that a wizard also loves her sister and wants her for himself while another woman wants the fiance to marry her daughter!This book is great for everyone to read