Memory Monday: Caught in Crystal, by Patricia Wrede

I love Patricia Wrede. She is an author I remember as being one of the first to introduce me to a world of make-believe like no other. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Sorcery and Cecelia...she just keeps hitting the nail on the head. We found this for mere cents on Amazon and decided to try it out. I slogged through it as well as I could but ended up setting it aside knowing full well that I'd just wasted a bookmark. The only thing is...this is the 4th in the series. Technically, though, it's first chronologically, so we figured we'd try it first. Let this be a lesson to all readers - read the books in the order they were published!
I handed it off to Trackgeek and his review follows:


Caught in Crystal
Lyra series, Book 4
Young Adult / Adult, 1987

from fantasticfiction.co.uk:
There stands a twisted tower.. hidden in the Windhome Mountains. Something is imprisoned there - the Sisterhood of Stars does not know precisely what, but something is bound tight with a wizard's spell so that it can never escape again. Kayl is one of the few to have looked upon the Twisted Tower. She has no desire to see it again - she left the Sisterhood long ago, settling down to a quiet life. Her sword lies unused in a secret place beneath the stones of her hearth. But something evil is leaking from the Tower. And now a sorceress and a wizard have appeared on Kayl's doorstep, demanding she take up the sword again.

Trackgeek:
It was fun for us to finally get our hands on a copy of one of Wrede's Lyra series. While still a good book it definitely moved at a different pace than most of her other novels. Another interesting twist is that the main character is an adult, whereas in most of the rest of her work that I have read that characters definitely fall in the juvenile or teen demographic.
Graded a B.

The Lyra Series:
1. Shadow Magic (1982)
2. Daughter of Witches (1983)
3. The Harp of Imach Thyssel (1985)
4. Caught in Crystal (1987)
5. The Raven Ring (1994)