The Carotian Union is a fledgling confederation of planets with one small problem: one of its worlds, Thalas, is on the brink of civil war. Why? Since the fall of its despotic monarchy, no one individual has been able to advance a claim to the throne that all will acknowledge. The stakes are very high: in the Carotian Union, the very substance of the worlds is alive. Kindly people using their magical powers responsibly make that substance thrive. Enough hostility, however, and---kerblam!---the planet will blow itself to pieces.
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Enter Mistra bas Carthanas, a Carotian princess with a flair for the mystical. In a vision, she sees the solution to the problem: Eliander, the Lost Price of Thalas, sent by magic millennia ago to a place outside normal time and space. Finding him won't be easy: seven mystical portals, each one housing an adventure, lie between the vision and its realization. But such considerations never deter a band of true heroes...
Accompanied by a band of disparate but extraordinary people hand-picked by the Carotian gods, Mistra sets out. Their first adventure, chronicled in "The Chalice of Life," presents them with a dilemma. They find the second portal easily enough, but parked before it is an ancient ill dragon. To find the cure for him and his people, they must explore an ancient ruined city, learn the fate of the people who created a glorious civilization that vanished overnight, and piece together the puzzle of how to operate the civilization's most prized relic: a fabulous chalice.
The review of this Book prepared by Karen Anne Webb
