Tag Archives: authors: l. jagi lamplighter

Prospero Regained

fiction September 26, 2011 Leave a comment

This was the final book of the Prospero’s Daughter trilogy by L. Jagi Lamplighter.

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From Amazon:

Prospero, the sorcerer on whose island of exile William Shakespeare set his play, The Tempest, has endured these past many centuries. His daughter Miranda runs the family business, Prospero, Inc. so smoothly that the vast majority of humanity has no idea that the Prosperos’ magic has protected Earth from numerous disasters. But Prospero himself has been kidnapped by demons from Hell, and Miranda, aided by her siblings, has followed her father into Hell to save him from a certain doom at the hands of vengeful demons. Time is running out for Miranda, and for the great magician himself. Their battle against the most terrifying forces of the Pit is a great fantasy adventure.

…beware, spoilers ahead!

These books got progressively better as the series went on. Half way through the first book, Prospero Lost, I wasn’t sure I was going to continue reading the series, but by the end of it, I had to order the next one, Prospero in Hell, right away. By the time I was done with that one, I was disappointed I had to wait six months for the final book’s release date.

These have become some of my favorite books.

This is obviously a quest story, with the ultimate goal of Miranda and her siblings being to rescue their father from Hell. What they learn about themselves and each other along the way makes the whole story really interesting. That said, the whole thing could have been really dull if the characters weren’t so much fun. It was really the characters that made this story worth reading.

Lamplighter did a great job with the Prospero family – their family dynamic, their struggle to figure out their father’s secrets, their witty back and forth, their magic and their own secrets are really what made this series compelling.

I was also happy that Lamplighter answered all the questions posed throughout the series. I hate it when any book leaves you to wonder/infer what had gone on without giving any concrete answers. At the end of Prospero Lost, I was sort of upset that no questions had been answered and I was really afraid a lot of questions would go unanswered. Besides that, there were so many characters, I thought it would be odd if nobody knew the answers to at least most of the questions raised. There are ten Prospero children (Caliban ends up being family), plus their father, plus Mab, plus Astreus, plus all the baddies they meet in Hell. Surely SOMEONE would know the answers.

I also liked the happy endings for everyone…except for poor Cornelius, whose ending was more bittersweet than sweet. I wish the Epilogue had jumped a little bit further ahead, where we’d see how everyone was doing later and if Cornelius was doing better, but it was still a satisfying ending.

There was only one thing I didn’t entirely understand – when the angel Muriel Sophia reveals who is guarding the entrance to Hell from Limbo, Miranda assumes it is Hades, but the angel tells her Hades stepped down long ago and now, the guard was the person who received forgiveness at Calvary and was now looking to make up for past misdeeds. Miranda immediately realizes who the new guard was, but I had no idea.

I thought I was missing some key piece of theology about who was forgiven at Calvary, but after checking with my friend George and my mom, who are two of the smartest, most knowledgeable people I know, I wasn’t missing anything. The other two people who were crucified with Jesus at Calvary received forgiveness from Jesus – one accepted, the other didn’t – but they weren’t exceptionally notable people. I didn’t understand why Miranda would know who it was immediately. Which of those two was it? Later, when the guard saves the Prosperos from The Queen of Air and Darkness, he tells Miranda not to let anyone know who he is, including her family. She doesn’t.

I still don’t know who the guard is. I thought it was a weird thing to not further explain, and that’s why I figured I was missing something. Why would it be a secret to the other characters if it was incredibly obvious to Miranda? And since Miranda is the narrator, shouldn’t it be incredibly obvious to the readers as well?

If anyone knows something about what went on at Calvary that I don’t, I’d love to be filled in.

The baddies in this series were really great too. I liked all the demons and minions and underlords of Hell. Another friend of mine has a complaint that in some ways, we over psycho-analyze villains and that sometimes its more fun when the villains don’t have any motivation except, mostly, that they want what they want. That was pretty great here. The servants of Hell wanted to destroy the Prospero family because the Prospero family kept them from doing whatever they felt like and forced them back into Hell. Simple and fun! Sure, they also want humans to never get to Heaven so that they can be miserable too, but that isn’t as lame as other villains, like Anakin Skywalker.

This wasn’t enough to ruin my love of the books, it was just a little bit too…this is right/this is wrong my liking. I get that it’s a story and it’s very much a book about a family following orders from Heaven, but up until that point it wasn’t so VoiceOfThePulpit-y. It was more about the family protecting mankind against the powers of Hell (them trying to kill us/destroy us/force us into their service) than it was a vehicle for preaching moral values. I mean, they were wandering through Dante’s Hell, so it’s not like the reader is taking this to be what Hell is really like (assuming it exists and all that).

The story does kind of redeem itself when actual Hell is empty and everyone in “Hell” is actually dreaming and when they wake up and realize they love God and all that. But I admit, I skipped the part with Lilith’s speech when I quickly re-read/skimmed the book.

I liked the trek through Dante’s Hell. I’ve never read The Inferno or anything, but I’ve read summaries, so it was nice to be in depth in that without having to know too much about it, as it’s all explained through the characters. The whole series was filled with references to history and literature so that was fun for me. I’m a loser that way.

But I greatly enjoyed this series overall, and Prospero Regained was a great conclusion to the series. We got all the answers and happy endings. It was kind of nice not to walk away from a series being unhappy with how it ended (the most notable series I’ve read in the last year that ended this way was the Hunger Games trilogy).

If this series is ever extended, I’ll be delighted. Given the opportunity, I’d be happy to revisit the Prospero family again.

Prospero Lost & Prospero in Hell [Prospero’s Daughter, Books 01 & 02]

fantasy, fiction April 17, 2011 1 Comment

My latest book obsession is the Prospero’s Daughter series by L. Jagi Lamplighter.


I read the first one, Prospero Lost for my Women of Fantasy book club.

The premise, pulled from a Publisher’s Weekly review on Amazon,  is this:

Four centuries after the events of  The Tempest, Prospero’s  daughter Miranda runs Prospero Inc., a company with immense influence in  the supernatural world. When she discovers a mysterious warning from  her father, who has gone missing, Miranda sets forth accompanied by Mab,  an Aerie Spirit manifested as a hard-boiled PI, to warn her far-flung,  enigmatic siblings that the mysterious Shadowed Ones plan to steal their staffs of power. Every encounter brings new questions, new problems and  a greater sense of what’s at stake.

Also noteworthy in the premise: the Prospero family is immortal.

…mild spoilers ahead, beware!

I was intrigued by the first one, but somewhat disappointed with it. All the mysteries were set up and there was all kinds of background. The background was interesting. It really was. Lamplighter brilliantly weaves Shakespeare, fantasy, mythology into one coherent, connected, somewhat complicated story. But there weren’t any answers in the book itself. I’m one of those people, who, when reading a series, feels that the reader should get something to hold on to from book to book. While the book was spectacularly set up, it gave no answers.

What really saved it was the characters. The heroine, Miranda, isn’t actually very likable. She sees nothing wrong with enslaving an entire species (a supernatural species, but a species none-the-less) and is very cold to just about everyone except her brother Theophrastus (or Theo, for short). She has a soft spot for her brother Mephistopheles (Mephisto, for short) and for Mab, the company detective, who is one of the spirits employed by her family to run their company. But Mephisto is mad, although very endearing, and Theo is cranky in his old age (he’s shunned immortality). Miranda’s sister, Logistilla, comes off as an absolutely horrendous human being, at least to me. Mab was a bit cranky himself, but mostly about his enslavement. Understandable.

But the way the characters interact, and why they are the way they are, really drew me into the story. Lamplighter’s writing and descriptions were my favorite types – rich but not dense. I’ve noticed that some fantasy writers can crush their own stories under the weight of their own words. Lamplighter doesn’t do that here.

I disliked, greatly, Miranda’s constant praying to her Lady Eurynome – who was a Unicorn and a goddess and…read the book, it’ll make more sense. But she guided Miranda in every instance of trouble. Miranda is supposed to be smart and capable, but her constant “praying for guidance” kind of undermined that. It made me feel like maybe Lamplighter had no way to get her characters where she wanted them to be without relying on this divine intervention, which aggravated me. Can’t a woman just be smart and/or intuitive without having to depend on divine intervention? This was really the only aspect of the story I didn’t enjoy.

But I’m a sucker for family drama, ancient magic, and dark secrets. I was fascinated by the fact that Erasmus (another younger brother – after five hundred years, there are nine Prospero children, and Miranda is the oldest) despises Miranda, and has for centuries, but she has no idea why. So naturally, I picked up the second one as soon as I was able.

The adventures in the first book continue immediately in Prospero in Hell. It was a better book. More action, less set up, and we got to meet the rest of Miranda’s family. I like the cast of characters. Theo is less cranky and infinitely more sexy in this book. He’s pretty high on the list of fictional characters I’d totally sleep with, especially when he returns to his youthful self.

There were some really great secondary surprises in here. I figured Gregor wasn’t dead, but I didn’t figure that he wasn’t dead the way it turned out it wasn’t dead. I don’t want to give too much away, but there you have it. The surprise for me wasn’t that Gregor wasn’t dead, it was why he wasn’t dead. Although more questions were raised in this book, and we still don’t meet  the “Dread Magician Prospero,” we got a lot of answers, which was really helpful as a reader. It’s frustrating to never have your questions answered.

Miranda was much more sympathetic in this book, and she’s becoming a better person, although why remains unclear. Erasmus is completely awful to her. But it’s quite obvious that in spite of the fact he has some gripe with her (that’s yet to be revealed except that he says she took something from him), he loves her because she’s his sister if nothing else. He blames himself when she’s brutally attacked by a demon. He also restores her hair to its natural dark color, which he’d previously turned silver with his staff.

All the Prospero children have magical staffs that have specific powers. You can read more about the family here and more about the staffs here. The staff page has some spoilers, so be warned. I don’t think the spoilers there are that huge, but yeah, fair warning. The family/staff stuff is pretty complicated, so I don’t want to get too much into it myself.

While I had some gripes with both books, my overall impression of them was positive. I felt that these two books could have worked as one book. They seem like different parts of the same book, because of the way the first book doesn’t give any answers and the second book gives you a lot of them. But overall, both these books pulled me in and I blew through them – a really enjoyable experience.

The third book, Prospero Regained, is set to come out September 13th of this year. Who’s excited? I am.