The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

About The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy

Co-written by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, this trilogy opens the Obsidian Universe: a high-fantasy world of Elven High Reaches, human Border cities, and an ancient magical barrier holding back a genocidal Demon army sealed away a thousand years earlier. The Outstretched Shadow introduces Kellen Tavadon, a mage's son whose talent for forbidden magic gets him exiled from his own city, and Idalia, the sister of a powerful mage who takes him in when no one else will. As the two investigate why the ancient seals are failing, To Light a Candle and When Darkness Falls escalate from a personal mystery into a full continent-spanning war, as the long-imprisoned Demons find new ways to threaten both the Elven High Reaches and the human Borderlands that stand between them and the wider world.

The trilogy sets up a shared secondary world and cast of institutions — the Elven mage-councils, the human Mage Guilds, the ancient Demon threat — that Lackey and Mallory would return to twice more, first a thousand years later in The Enduring Flame and then further back in The Dragon Prophecy, without requiring any of the trilogies to be read before the others.

How to read this series

Publication order is the correct order within this trilogy — Kellen and Idalia's story runs continuously across all three books, so read The Outstretched Shadow (2003), To Light a Candle (2004), and When Darkness Falls (2006) in that sequence. This is the first trilogy set in the Obsidian Universe; The Enduring Flame Trilogy (set roughly a thousand years later, different cast) and The Dragon Prophecy Trilogy (set in the same world's deeper past) share the setting but not characters, so none of the three trilogies needs to be read before another to follow this one's story.