The Golden Key

The Golden Key is the only book on this list with multiple authors (and three of them at that), perhaps because such works have a tendency to be disjointed, a result of the difficulty caused by attempting to meld multiple authors' differing styles. This isn't the case here, with each author writing one section of the three part book (Jennifer Roberson wrote the first, Melanie Rawn wrote the second, and Kate Elliott wrote the third). Tying the three stories together is a unifying plot, following two forever interconnected families whose histories are recorded using paintings instead of words. The Grijalva family of gifted painters guide events around them according to their desires, while the royal do'Verradas rule Tira Virte, the story's country of focus, a country which is in many ways an alternate version of Spain. The novel spans multiple generations over the course of 400 years, but mostly follows the main characters, Sario and his beloved cousin Saavedra, both gifted members of the Grijalva family. Creative readers will love this intricately woven story where art is magic, and the protagonist is in fact an antihero who often goes too far in the pursuit of what he wants. While each of the three authors intended to write another novel in this world, only Melanie Rawn has done so in her book The Diviner, a prequel to The Golden Key which was published in 2011. Read if You Like: art, magic, complex characters and relationships, family sagas, deep world-building, antiheros

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