Nora Roberts' Key Trilogy

I'm addicted to Nora Roberts lately. (You may have noticed.) I don't think it's possible to read all 200+ of her books, but it sure looks like I'm trying! I recently reread the Key Trilogy on impulse (if I keep rereading them I'll never get to new ones!) My library has these as a box set, so you check out one item but get all three books, but if you're reading them on your own the order of the Key Trilogy is as follows:

Key of Light
Key of Knowledge
Key of Valor

I think that it's fairly important to read these in the correct order, as the books center around a quest and you would want to read about it from beginning to end. This series centers around three women who are destined to save the souls of three Celtic demigoddesses from an evil sorcerer. (Not at all far fetched, ahem.) Each woman has her own book, and her portion of the quest will center around her own strengths. The magical aspect of this series is treated as a central element of the stories, unlike the way the supernatural aspects are treated in a series like the Inn Boonsboro books. The three mortal women have to come to believe in magic, and fight it, without any magical powers of their own.

As with most of her series, the relationships between the women (or men) are what draws me to Roberts' books. It's slightly unbelievable that the three strangers will become immediate fast friends, but less unbelievable than the bit about the evil sorcerer. Despite being strangers, I enjoy seeing the women together and wish I could pop in for a girl's night with them. The same can be said for the three men of the series, life-long friends who find themselves integral parts of the quest.  The relationships between each couple is strong, of course, but it's not what draws me to the books.

My favorite of the three books is probably Key of Knowledge, though I'd be hard pressed to call Jordan my favorite hero. Key of Knowledge is a friends to lovers to enemies back to lovers type story, and you all know I can't resist best friends falling in love. Brad, from Key of Valor, is a terrific hero, determined to get prickly Zoe to fall for him as hard as he has for her. Sadly, Zoe is my least favorite of the women, as I felt she hung on to her excuses a bit too hard, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, and then caved in a matter of a page or two.  This series didn't feature a money-hungry, selfish, absent mother figure, so that's another point in it's favor.  I don't know that this is a favorite Roberts' series of mine (I still love the Chesapeake Bay brothers and the Bride Quartet an awful lot) but if you're a Robert's fan, it's worth a read.

Other links of interest:
Nora Roberts' Chesapeake Bay series
Nora Roberts' MacKade series
Robyn Carr's Virgin River series
Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series