It’s time once again to go Tough Travelling with Fantasy Faction,  On the first day of each month, with a pre arranged theme in mind, we will all come up with out own individual selection of books that take us travelling through the tropes of fantasy.  This month’s theme:

MENTORS

A Mentor will be at your service until around halfway through the tour of Fantasyland, when you will unaccountably lose him. Before that he will guide you, tell you what to do in the face of strange customs, and even sometimes instruct you in how to perform minor MAGICS. The Tough Guide suggests that the mentor will be several hundred years old, probably with a long white beard, which will give him the right to be bossy, smug, tiresomely philosophical and infuriatingly secretive about all-important facts.

Well, firstly, because I’ve just read this book I’m going to of with Ferius from Sebastien de Castell’s Spellslinger series.  Ferius reminds me of Caine from the old Kung Fu series.  She’s travelling on an unknown path, in a world with a western vibe and she has this sort of Karma attitude all about giving people a chance before turning to violence.  Ferius is one of the Argosi people, their travels lead them to witness events that they believe could be world changing and they paint cards, a little like tarot cards, to reflect these events.  Ferius is such an easy to like character – funny, sassy, full of one liners, doesn’t know when to give up.  Yeah, I really like her.

An unusual choice next.  I’m going with Toby Daye from Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series.  I love this series and in fact need to press on with the next book.  Toby doesn’t have a long beard and maybe she doesn’t completely fit the description above but I like that she’s become a mentor to a couple of characters in this series.  I won’t elaborate because it will contain spoilers for those who haven’t read the series yet.

Another unusual choice – I seem to have gone for all the ladies so far – not a beard in sight!  Brienne of Tarth.  I’m not sure if this is also a cheat tbh.  Brienne takes on Podrick as her squire – which I’m going to say is a sort of mentoring role.  Anyway, I enjoyed reading and watching these two so they’re going on the list:

Finally, Master Lo who becomes a mentor to Moirin in Jacqueline Carey’s Naamah series.  Master Lo teaches Moirin how to become calm using different breathing techniques.  He’s instrumental in her decision to travel to Ch’in and he also introduces her to Bao.

I was trying to stay away from the two mentors that immediately sprung to mind and definitely fit the description above:

“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”