By Mary Hoffman
[Armadillo 7.2 Summer 2005]

Lene Kaaberbol must have had a significant number of good fairies at her christening. She had her first books published, in the Tina series, at the age of fifteen, and those four titles have sold over 100,000 copies in Scandinavia alone. She is bi-lingual in Danish and English and has recently had her translation (of the Shamer's Signet) short-listed for the Marsh award.

But as well as fantasy of the serious mainstream kind, Kaaberbol also has a sideshoot career as the author of the W.I.T.C.H. books, which won her the Disney Mickey Award for øBest Novel Writer of 2001.Ó The 26-part cartoon series of W.I.T.C.H. launched in the UK on cable and satellite in April of this year but is already huge in the US. It began as a pre-teen magazine and Kaaberbol took the given characters and setting ¨ five 13-year-old urban witches - and turned them into credible stories. The writer's gift.

The Shamer Quartet has been popular in Denmark for some time, coming out a book a year since 2000. The four titles have now been handsomely re-jacketed by Hodder and deserve to find a strong British fan-base.

Kaaberbol starts from a powerful premise; every village in her imagined world has its own Shamer, a woman whose gaze it is impossible for anyone to sustain without revealing everything in their soul, crimes included. Dina has inherited her mother, Melussina's, gift; the Shamer's power descends through the female line.

But Dina belongs to an ordinary family: mother, older brother Davin, younger sister, Melli. There is no father around; Shamers tend to have different fathers for each child, but the family is self-sufficient. One day Melussina is called away to give judgment in a murder case and does not return. And then someone comes for Dina who can look her in the eye ...

So begins a journey into self-knowledge and conflict. The books are full of ambushes, kidnaps, torture, dragons and villains. But the most interesting struggle is Dina's with the gifts from her two parents. In the third book we learn that her father is Sezuan, an ambiguous character with a flute, who can play people to sleep or even to death.

Dina has inherited his powers as well as her mother's and for a time they seem to cancel each other out, to render her incapable of action. The last book, The Shamer's War, deals partly with her fight to integrate the two halves of her self. Since this is something everyone has to do, even without magical powers, I think Kaaberbol is on to a winner.

Dina has a huge crush on Nicodemus, the presumed murderer of the first book, who is in fact both innocent and the true heir of Dunark. If there is a flaw, it is that the topology of the land is not clear; individual strongholds or villages are well described but it is hard to see how they relate to one another or what the political structures and boundaries are. I should have liked the traditional endpaper maps that fantasy has commanded ever since Tolkien.

Nicodemus is an interesting character: the hero who doesn't want to fight. He makes a good foil for Dina's brother Davin, who is brave and hot-headed in equal measure. Melussina and Sezuan are both subtly portrayed, not stereotyped. And there are many memorable minor figures. I especially liked Callum and Black-Arse, both members of the Lachlan clan.

It looks as if Lene Kaaberbol has inherited the mantle of Denmark's most famous son, whose centenary we are currently celebrating. At least in so far as being prolific and with unlimited imagination.

I believe that she is running her own publishing house now, as well as writing her own books. There must have been an extra fairy at that christening.