The books of the American writer Barbara Hambly, author of historical detective stories and novels in the high fantasy style, are little known in our country; only 10 of them have been translated into Russian, although she is often compared to Ursula Le Guin, a recognized classic of the genre. The author is a specialist in the history of the Middle Ages and defended her dissertation on the topic, and the worlds she created look extremely credible. Hence the accuracy in describing the everyday life of a kingdom that never existed in the book series “Winter Lands.” In this very real-looking world, there are dwarves living alongside people, dragons inhabit the northern seas, and in the forests travelers are stalked by myuinks, whisperers, and ordinary bandits. Magic in her world is a kind of knowledge like science—but in Barbara Hambly’s novels, the central focus is the description of the eternal strings of the human soul: creativity and love, fame and power, good and evil, and the torments of choice and loss…