(Review by Jane Beaumont, Cape Town, South Africa)

Roberta MacAvoy writes with a Renaissance paintbrush. Take this...

"The road slipped east; it rolled up and down. Damiano rode through a silence of trees. In a birch-covered valley the sky above him was filigreed with bare branches. Dead leaves, sodden after the autumn's rains, padded the horse's hooves like cloth wrappings. The sun and the trees wove a pattern of warm lace over Damiano's head. He nodded sleepily with every step, as did Festelligambe. Macchiata had nothing to say; she spent the day in her nose."

Damiano is the young son of a great witch, his own powers under-extended as yet; Festelligambe (sticklegs) is his horse; Macchiata (spotty) is his beloved talking dog. Together they traverse the northern Italy of the 15th century on - of course - a quest. But the quest is as unusual as its protagonists and the characters encountered along the way seem to spring from some brightly coloured and lavishly gilded Book of Hours and include not only Satan himself but also his brother Raphael, archangel and lute tutor to Damiano.

MacAvoy evokes mood magnificently but she is perhaps best at the spirit of place - the iron harshness of Tuscany in wintertime, Piedmont in perpetual summer bloom, the arid bitterness of Satan's palace. Her characters stay imprinted on the retina long after the book is finished and some, Raphael and Macchiata for me, find a permanent shelf in the memory file.

There are (happily) two more in this series, Damiano's Lute and Raphael, to enjoy. MacAvoy has written other fantasy books but on different and, to me at any rate, less appealing themes.

These are not newly published books but infinitely well worth seeking out.