Book: Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin

Raine Benares is a seeker, not especially high on the power scale, but passable. Her family is mostly known for being smugglers and thieves, rather than upstanding citizens. They are however very loyal to their friends and each other, which lands Raine in the trouble that this first book in the series centers around.

Afraid that a friend and sometimes employee of hers is getting himself into trouble, Raine follows him to find out what he's up to. She finds Quentin breaking into the house of a well known Necromancer in the town. As expected, things don't go well, and soon they are in an all out battle with a certain faction of goblins known as the Khrynsani. Raine herself is an elf, and I typically imagine goblins to be nasty short little ugly creatures with big noses or something like that. Not so in this story! The Goblins of this story are more along the lines of dark elves, and are a beautiful but deadly night to the Elven day in aspect.

Once free of the fight, Raine questions Quentin to find that he'd been hired to find a certain artifact and bring it to his contact. She takes it from him, deciding that anything the Khrynsani are after isn't something they should get and so she decides to hold it for safekeeping, only she gets a lot more than she bargained for. As it turns out, the artifact she now can't get rid of without great bodily harm is actually connected to a much more dangerous item, and suddenly Raine is very high on everyone's list to acquire, as their key to finding it, the Saghred... the Soul Thief... Anything with a nickname like that can't be good...

I kind of had a hard time getting into this one, but I suspect that's more my real life circumstances and how busy and tired I've been rather than any fault of the story. It's actually very fast paced and witty, with likable characters, and well put together ideas. By the end I was definitely interested in getting the next book Armed and Magical to see what Raine and her friends are up to next! This is a good pick if you're looking for a fun fantasy romp.

See Lisa Shearin's Website for more information, and a peek at the covers for the next two books!