This book starts out as a fairly standard fantasy love story but quickly becomes a much more serious fantasy about the uses and abuses of power. It starts out slow but by halfway through you won't be able to put it down. Great character development especially.

For more info about this book and other Louise Cooper info, check out The North Spire online.

Ah, power. We all want it, no matter how much we deny we do. What would I do if I had it? What would you? Of course, you and I are good, decent people and would never abuse power. Or would we? You and I know that power would never corrupt us. And if, perchance, it did, it would take a very long time and a very good reason. Or would it? It would certainly take more than a careless word from someone to make us wish harm on them, wouldn't it? Maybe not.

And magic is always something to think twice about, to be cautious with, and to respect absolutely, because magic constantly has a way of sneaking up behind us and biting us where it really hurts. If you don't understand magic, it's best to not mess around with it. But, then, there would be no story.

The Summer Witch begins as a harmless love story but transforms into a much more complex tale about power and what it does to even the most innocent and good hearted of us. The character development is remarkably good and the emotions well explored as the main character matures. Ms. Cooper has managed to allow us to not only enjoy a wonderful story, but also to examine our human frailties, desires, and fragility.

"Inferno: Book Two of Indigo" finds Princess Anghara/Indigo and her stuttering wolf in a burning realm of torment and terror. A village of copper miners is coerced into joining the cult of Charchad, who turns out to be one of the demons that Anghara/Indigo loosed upon the world in Book One of this series. Anyway, Charchad forces the villagers to mine uranium (we never learn why), and death, radiation poisoning, and really icky mutations make life miserable for all who stumble into his realm. Indigo and Grimya, her talking wolf, join forces with Jasker, a priest of the Fire Goddess Ranaya, in order to destroy the cult of Charchad and the demon, Aszareel.

Indigo spends a large part of "Inferno" trapped in lava flows, torturing a mine overseer (who, admittedly, is slimy, revolting character), and snarling at her allies. I can't figure out why anyone would like her or want to help her, especially the poor wolf.

"Nemesis: Book One of Indigo" was definitely a better read than "Inferno: Book Two of Indigo". I'm still debating whether I should venture into Book Three. I keep hoping Indigo will lose the stuttering wolf and develop a more winning personality, because I really admire Louise Cooper's writing ability. Her "Time Master" trilogy is one of the best reads in Fantasy.

Maybe the "Indigo" series is just not for me. Check out "Inferno" if you must, but Niven & Pournelle's "Inferno" is a far better read (not to mention Dante Alighieri's).

I absolutely love this book it has a lot of emotions. As I read the book I felt emotionally involved. I think that the book was well written because the author able to make me feel like I was one of the characters in the book. There was a time when I felt cheated because Quinas acted as if he was really hurt by what Indigo and Jasker's elementals had done to him. The telepathic she-wolf really did care for her friend yet, Indigo didn't see that. Nemesis, Indigo's enemy that will dog her in her footsteps, had such a hold on her that she couldn't see that.

An original plot. Louise really has so many elements in her novels, despite the fact they aren't terribly long. It is easy to over look them. Her look at the pressure to conform in society, fear of man and the unknown, the effects of religious fanatacism, and how subjectivity can obscure reality. In Inferno, Indigo finds a religious group falling apart, literally, from the effects of their new found deity, Charchad. This is perhaps the most physical demon Indigo faces. The story's resolution is on par for Louise Cooper, where this book gets outstanding is the powerful, and nearly overwhelming imagery she creates. As one reviewer noted you can almost feel the heat, the nacreous glow of decay that the Charchad emminates you can so easily envision. You can feel the community decaying as you read. A strong first challenge for Indigo and it really grabs a hold of you. Plus even though you can feel the evil of the Demon Cooper doesn't create a derivative demon at all. It isn't growly and melodramatic, it feels alien and perhaps even insane, but evil nonetheless. Enjoy.

This is probably one of the fantasy writer's first book , being written in 1976 and is a simple yarn dwelling on the story of Marion and her companion Roland who whilst holidaying in Cornwall meet the mysterious and reclusive character of Keith Sharwood. Marion becomes emotionally involved with Keith and throughout the story a macabre chain of events unfolds.....!

Love,murder and a nice splash of horror this little book is a gem .... well I thought so.

The beginning of Cooper's fascination with tall, gaunt and brooding men is evident in the romanticised depiction of the aesthetic-vampirical Keith , similarities to Tarod (yum) unavoidable . Good little pre-cursor to her later Time Master Trilogy Books.

This book is one of the few 'middle books' I've ever read that hasn't dropped the pace from the first book or served only as a mildly interesting prelude to the third. Fantasy trilogies tend to have a certain pace, I think, that I've gotten used to: setting the stage in the first book, holding it or slipping a little in the middle, and then bringing it all up fast and furious in the end. So I started _The Pretender_ with fairly high expectations- I'd loved everything else by Louise Cooper that I'd read, and _The Deceiver_, the first book, was very good- but thinking that it would follow the same pattern as most everything else.

I've never been so glad to be wrong.

_The Pretender_ has two main plots- one focused on happenings in the Star Peninsula and the Circle, the other on the Summer Isle in the south. Both have excellent scenes- especially near the end- and both are resolved (as much as plots in a middle book of a trilogy get resolved) beautifully. Without giving too much away, there are scenes where both the main characters in the book are in contact with more-than-mortal powers. Those scenes were the best, played out with awe and reverence as if the author had been there and wanted the audience to feel what she did.

The writing maintains a level just below this for the rest of the book, and the character development fits the writing style extraordinarily well. At times- especially, it seems, in middle books of trilogies- I have had the feeling that the style the author uses for one character has influenced the style he or she uses for another, and they don't seem like separate people. In this case, they were. Every character had his or her own means of telling the story, dealing with fears and concerns (even when those concerns were similiar), and growing and building on what they were in _The Deceiver_ to what they must become.

I didn't give this book five stars only because it isn't the best book by Louise Cooper that I've read. (That's _Star Ascendant_). But don't let that discourage you from reading it, or the rest of the trilogy. High marks, very much so.

In Revenent the sixth demon Indigo faces is the most abstract she has faced up until this point. This makes the palpable evil that pervaded the previous books nearly nonexistent in this, despite the haunting cover art, and the grim title. This is still a wonderful book, and quite original. She creates an atmosphere of a society so driven to efficiency and the procuring of wealth, that even their language has been effected. Their society is tightly regimented, and politeness is used only as far as it serves their own ulterior motives. What I found to be one of the most interesting facets, was her ability to make fun and singing and dancing seem to be evil. I have seen other authors attempt this kind of situation. It probably has not been done as well since Aldus Huxley in "A Brave New World". Louise Cooper again shows her tremedous ablilty to get you involved in the story. Sadly some of the plot twists I did see coming, but "Revenant" is still a great book. Sadly, this is one of the more difficult to find of the Indigo Saga, but it is well worth the effort.

I read Louise Cooper's Time Master trilogy and the first book of the Time Master prequel series (when Chaos rules), and enjoyed them for their chilling, vivid imagery. They were un-put-downable. I had to read through the night to finish them. Cooper has one of the most original, malign, and imaginative minds in the fantasy business. When I was unable to locate the two other books of the Time Master prequel, I started working my way through one of her earlier series: the Indigo books, of which "Nemesis" is the first.

"Nemesis" is the story of a Celtic Pandora named Anghara who opens the wrong box and lets evil back into the world. There are large sections of imaginative, Cooperesque fantasy and well worth reading. In fact, I've already ordered the second book in the Indigo series. However, overall I'd have to guess that 'Nemesis' is one of Cooper's first ventures into fantasy. The heroine is an arrogant, impulsive, headstrong adolescent who doesn't really change through the course of the book, even though her whole family is slaughtered by the demons she frees, and her lover is condemned to purgatory until she can rescue him.

The lover is the character I really feel sorry for. He is brave, kind, and completely innocent of wrong-doing and yet he is condemned to a particularly awful life-in-death while Anghara-Indigo escapes pretty much unscathed from her own act of wickedness (her hair turns gray and a few months into the plot, she sprains her ankle).

With occasional pick-me-ups from the Earth Mother, Anghara-Indigo sets out to recapture the demons she let loose on the world, hindered by her nemesis (an evil copy of herself with what appear to be vast supernatural powers) and helped by a talking wolf.

'Nemesis' is a good fantasy and worth reading, just not as good as Cooper's later books.

"Inferno" finds Princess Anghara/Indigo and her stuttering wolf in a burning realm of torment and terror. A village of copper miners is coerced into joining the cult of Charchad, who turns out to be one of the demons that Anghara/Indigo loosed upon the world in Book One of this series. Anyway, Charchad forces the villagers to mine uranium (we never learn why), and death, radiation poisoning, and really icky mutations make life miserable for all who stumble into his realm. Indigo and Grimya, her talking wolf, join forces with Jasker, a priest of the Fire Goddess Ranaya, in order to destroy the cult of Charchad and the demon, Aszareel.

Indigo spends a large part of "Inferno" trapped in lava flows, torturing a mine overseer (who, admittedly, is slimy, revolting character), and snarling at her allies. I can't figure out why anyone would like her or want to help her, especially the poor wolf.

"Nemesis: Book One of Indigo" was definitely a better read than "Inferno: Book Two of Indigo". I'm still debating whether I should venture into Book Three. I keep hoping Indigo will lose the stuttering wolf and develop a more winning personality, because I really admire Louise Cooper's writing ability. Her "Time Master" trilogy is one of the best reads in Fantasy.
Maybe the "Indigo" series is just not for me. Check out "Inferno" if you must, but Niven & Pournelle's "Inferno" is a far better read (not to mention Dante Alighieri's).