The Search For The Emerald Blackbird is many things -- it's a sword and sorcery epic, it's gothic, it's a fantasy novel, it's an opera... but above all else it's an adventure.
    The setting is a sort of Mediterranean atoll consisting of a half dozen or so inhabited islands. The main island is where you'll find Coral City, where most of the characters in the book start out.
    The book is narrated by a 21-year-old woman named Laguna. Ordinarily Laguna tends a flower farm with her grandfather and sells their flowers in town during the day.
    Then you've got Angel, who is on a relentless quest to find a magical statuette known as the Emerald Blackbird. Angel is one of the three characters in The Search For The Emerald Blackbird who has been brought over from the first book, The Hero. He's middle-aged, generally considered to be a thief by trade, and not too terribly concerned with the well-being of the people who stand in his way.
    Roman Hauptmann is the city's Chief Engineer, but he's lost his confidence due to a horrible accident that involved one of his greatest inventions, and the recent disappearance of his daughter. He's in his early forties and comically rough and sarcastic.
    Artemis is a member of a reculsive race of beings that lives on a secluded island near Coral City. A lifelong outcast, she longs to return her tribe to its former glory.
    Lance Valour is a dashing young travelling performer who can't seem to have any fun unless there is danger involved. He's sick of show business and would rather be out adventuring, doing things that real heroes do.
    Magus Rex is a silly old magician with a passion for science and opera. He converted one of the islands into a theme park called RexLand. He keeps to himself usually, not because of any kind of social phobia but because he's usually too busy working on some hare-brained scheme or wild experiment.
    Fenrir is Laguna's pet wolf; the two can communicate telepathically and often have internal arguments over matters of philosophy.
    Although they don't know one another initially (with the exception of Fenrir and Laguna), the characters learn how they are connected to each other through two major past events: a horrible disaster in which many people were killed, and the ongoing quest to protect the Emerald Blackbird statue from falling into the wrong hands. The trouble is, each character has their own opinion on whose hands are the right ones, and some of them want the statue for themselves.