The priests of Danland have determined that their prince's wife will be chosen from the girls of Mount Eskel. The problem? The girls of Mount Eskel have lived their entire lives in isolation, only experiencing what their quarries, their mountain, and their village have to offer. Obviously, the future princess needs to be more sophisticated than that! So all the eligible girls are taken to a remote location, where they are to be trained and polished into proper young ladies who can win the prince's heart.

The story was told in a realistic way; the only thing that really made it fantasy (apart from Danland not being a real place) was that the people of Mount Eskel possess a certain kind of telepathy based upon common memories, which is facilitated by contact with the special rock they mine. It was fun watching the girls slowly learn to embrace their education, and bring their newfound knowledge back to their village to improve everyone's lot in life, rather than merely using it as a tool to perhaps snare a husband. The girls grow and develop as they learn the benefits of teamwork, overcoming their differences to unite against common enemies as they come.

The Master of Greengarden has a grandson who is a terrible monster, which he keeps locked in an attic. No one has ever seen him, but they've heard his insane ravings, and they don't need to see him to know just how dangerous a monster the Thing is. The land is dying, the valley is threatened by barbarian raiders, and the Master is getting old... so he looks to his bondsmen to find a quiet, timid girl whose parents he can bribe to hand her over, so she can become the wife of the Thing. He finds such a girl in Rose, a fifteen-year-old asthmatic whose breathing spells keep her from performing the hard physical labor of the other bondsmen, and whose ugliness makes it doubtful that she will ever find a husband any other way. Rose accepts, partly because she wants good things for her family: a higher-ranking position for her father; a nice house full of lovely things for her mother; freedom for herself, her brother, and her parents. But mostly she does it because of her love for the land. Though not very clever in other matters, Rose's abilities with trees and plants are masterful, and she wishes to use her new position to bring life and productivity back to the dying orchard. But first she needs to survive the Master's plottings, overcome the trauma of a husband she doesn't love and is never allowed to see in the light, gain the respect of a people who have nothing but disdain for her, and avert a war in the process.

I read White Midnight without realizing that it was related to a previous book, Firegold, which is set in the same world but several hundred years in the future. Rose is a nice departure from your run-of-the-mill heroine. Weak in body, physically ugly, and an outcast among her own people, Rose has a lot of personal obstacles to overcome before she can save her corner of the world. The hardest part of the book was that Rose was constantly hallucinating and it was difficult to know how to interpret it. Did Rose's mental disabilities extend so far as to make her insane? Or did her connection to the land run much, much deeper than mere love for a place? On the other hand, Rose was also kept guessing as to her own sanity along with the reader. There were no surprises in the ending, but things wrapped up satisfactorily.

An installment in the Forgotten Realms series, this book introduces the early life of Drizzt, a dark elf who managed to preserve his innate sense of honor and ethics while growing up in a society that celebrates and embraces evil. Though categorized as adult fiction, it would appeal to the D&D and roleplaying crowd.

The book's best point was the unique environment in which it takes place: an underground city, a matriarchal society, spider-worshipping evil elves who can see in the infrared spectrum, battling houses that would make the Medici's and the Borgia's pale in comparison. The low part was the plot; the characterization; the dialogue; the lack of depth, development, and motivation, etc.