Unicorn Valley 4: Moontyger's Quest by Lena Austin From the Changeling Press site: First, you must want to live. With the unicorn mercenary Jamir and the dying Imperial dragon Li Chin as her guides, Moontyger sets out to find the descendants of the lost Kirinn clan. The trail will take them down the humans' Silk Road, where they will find out there are worse things than dying, and a new life provides a hair-fine thread to those long gone.

After falling in love with Lena Austin's characters in the previous three books of this series (Gryphon's Heart, Stallion's Heart and Healer's Heart) I was more than ready to leap once again into the wonderful world that Ms. Austin has created for her Unicorn Valley series. This wonderful world contains magical places which act as refuges for magical creatures, and for me it provides an escape from reality. This series has brought me much reading pleasure, and with this being the final book, I was anxious to see how Ms. Austin would end it.

I have loved the magical creatures that Ms. Austin has created in the previous books, and with this book we are introduced to even more, such as weretigers, and dragons. While we have "met" some of these creatures before in previous books, I loved the opportunity to get to know them in this story. And getting to read about another magical refuge, the Enchanted Forest, where so many of the unfamiliar new magical creatures reside, it was as if a whole new world opened up.

As I read the adventures of Moontyger, Li Chin and Jamir I couldn't pull myself away from the book. Ms. Austin did a wonderful job of providing us with fascinating characters, an interesting quest complete with action, and intense titillating scenes between her characters. I was so interested in not only seeing whether the three of them would find the missing descendents of the Kirinn but also how and if the three of them could find a way to keep Li Chin from translating to a spirit form.

This book, and in fact this entire series, will definitely be kept in my keeper pile. The world created by Ms. Austin is memorable and in creating it, Ms. Austin ranks right up there with some of my favorite fantasy writers.

Review by C.L.

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