Anyway, the trilogy focuses on an attempt to recover books of magic stored away since before the Great Wars that changed the face of the world. Thirty years ago, a prophetic dream led Kael Elessedil on a journey with the Elfstones to discover a potent magic, long ago sealed away across the Blue Divide, the great ocean to the west. When the body of one of the travelers washes up on shore with a map to the source of the magic, the Druid Walker conscripts a ragtag band of would-be adventurers, career soldiers, an airship crew, and an elven prince, to attempt to claim the tomes of magic before the Isle Witch, a powerful sorceress who believes that Walker murdered her family when she was young in an attempt to claim her magic. She, in turn, seeks to find the tomes and use them to destroy him for his crimes. However, Walker has brought a surprise for her that she could not have anticipated, and her mentor is not about to be eclipsed by either his pupil or the Druid. Even so, the tomes are not simply lying about. They are stored with a great many treasures of the old world, and that which watches over them and the defenses it commands are still fully functional.
And the Druid suspects an even more sinister plan afoot, wherein the books of magic are merely the bait in a trap...Now the whole old world repository is a high-tech modern facility, so you have a lot of familiar things looked at with unfamiliar eyes. Terms like "fire threads", "creepers", "Wronks", and "strange fish-eyes with red blinky lights", all used to describe things we'd recognize as lasers, robots, cyborgs, and security cameras. And since a fair portion of the first book and the majority of the second deal with the area where the magic is stored, you get a lot more sci-fi than normal for these stories. Oh, and "flameless lamps" for light bulbs. I like that one.
Now that's not to say it isn't awesome. There were times I nearly cried, times I could have cheered, and even a couple of crowning moments of glory where nothing seemed more appropriate than to sit down the books and turn the moment over in my mind from every angle, so that I would know it inside and out for the rest of the story. There was even one moment where all three were true.
