Review: Hespira by Matthew Hughes

Matthew Hughes takes the action down a peg in Hespira, the third in his Hengis Hapthorn series, but that's fine -- one of the chief pleasures of the Hengis Hapthorn books is the opportunity to travel to a couple of the 10,000 worlds in the Spray (the galaxy), fantastic, funny planets Hughes creates as Old Earth becomes forgotten. Hapthorn here takes on the case of an amnesiac as his intuition, now in a separate body, plays with magic back on Old Earth. Meanwhile, he rues the day when the rational world will be overturned by "sympathetic association," or in other words magic, which gives the proceedings a tinge of bitterness. This charming adventure will make you stay up late to finish it, particularly if you've read the other two books. Challenges: Twenty-ten challenge (new for 2010), fantasy challenge (one of six). (This qualifies as a spanking new book because it was published in January 2010 although the copyright says it's 2009.)