Niranjan has created a fictional narrative in which world-building is secondary to establishing the personalities of her various characters. It is a world in which there are humans with magic (mages), and also a variety of magical beings who are inherently magical, each in their own way.

Central to the story are Aderin, prince of the merpeople, and Ellwood, a human mage. Immediately we know there is some sort of emotional attachment between the two, but then the entire narrative is subsumed in a plot that Ellwood has constructed to trick magicals into willingly giving him control of their power—the reason for which is purposely left unclear at first.

Aside from his paramour Aderin, Ellwood lures four other magical beings—an elf, a sylph, a phoenix, and a blood-thirsty predator from a distant, isolated land, whose creature form is never named. He imprisons them all in his keep—a castle-like structure that is only described slightly. As terrible as his tricking the magicals into his trap is, it is clear that Ellwood has a plan that, as he sees it, is for the greater good of the world.

Ellwood has the ability to conjure portals, and his power is tremendous with his four prisoners’ magic at his beck and call. Basically, the characters in the book can go wherever they need to go with little effort—which certainly underscores the power of their magic, but also gives the story an odd, disconnected sense of geography. We do visit Aderin’s underwater kingdom, which has a little more physical reality for the reader than any other place in the book aside from Ellwood’s keep.

The plan that Ellwood triggers turns out to be just the first in a cascading suite of magical problems, each more dire than the last. Throughout it all, Ellwood struggles with an overwhelming sense of guilt and sadness at what his “greater good” idea has caused him to do. Despite Aderin’s forgiveness and love, Ellwood seems to be stuck in a cycle of self-loathing—which is, it turns out, the central theme of the narrative.

All in all, it’s a fascinating view of a magical world, with more than the usual issue of infighting amongst various sorts of magical beings than we find in other works in this genre. Most satisfying overall is the gradual change in the way Ellwood is perceived by the beings around him. Although it pretends to be about enormous issues of mortality and divinity, Niranjan’s epic tale of magical morality is really more about the nuances of good and evil and personal responsibility.