In which NEW GROUND IS COVERED

I have quite a bit of downtime at my job, because the person I replaced midyear has FOUR conference periods. I don't even know how he is a teacher. I'm not really complaining, per se, just in awe that he still has a certificate.

But I digress. Part of what I've been filling my conference periods with is reading. Yes, I'm awful, yes, I'm lazy, blah blah, get over it. I decided to restart reading my Mercedes Lackey novels, because I honestly really enjoyed them in high school but haven't read them since. I'm curious as to whether they stand the test of time. I also, because I am SPECIAL MC SPECIAL PANTS, am going to post reviews and My Thoughts.

I'm reading in more or less the order they were published. Thus, I'm beginning with the "Queen's Own" trilogy (I might possibly be making up these trilogy titles as I go) originally published in 1987. Yes, that is the year I was born.

Queen's Own

In this novel, Holderkin child Talia opens our entry into the universe of Valdemar by...knitting? no, carding wool, that's it...and reading a tale. We're introduced to quite a few of the major elements of this universe (Companions, magic, Vanyel) in a dream sequence wherein Talia fantasizes about escaping.

We immediately find out how much Talia wants to escape from her oppressive life, and stumble right on Lackey's favorite method of introducing a character: sympathetic bullied character is wildly oppressed by their family, then they get out.

Now, don't get me wrong: I don't think this is a bad thing, and it becomes much less common after her first few trilogies. I distinctly remember reading about how Talia (and especially Vanyel, but that's another story (LITERALLY HAHA)) is treated and identifying so hard, even though my family life was HILARIOUSLY nowhere close to anything that happens in these books. That doesn't mean that my eleven-year-old brain didn't think "I'm just like this, I can get out too right? Can I have a Companion?", because it totally did. It really immersed me in the story, and very quickly built a lot of sympathy for Talia, especially when she did something about it rather than angsting for three books (COUGH VANYEL).

Anyway. Moving on. The interesting thing about the Queen's Own books is that, while they were written first (as far as I know?) they do such an incredible job of setting up this universe. One of Lackey's failings, to me at least, is how she basically made up her magic as she went. Reading from The Last Herald-Mage to the Winds trilogy and especially in The Mage Storms, the concepts she employed in how magic work get drastically more refined and specific, to the point where the books are almost contradictory.

However, nothing in Queen's Own is like that. The mind magicks are very simply described, and stay consistent even with what's written in the Exile or Collegium books. And really, these books are, first and foremost, about characters. There's not even really a plot to speak of; Talia settles in to life at the Collegium and meets a bunch o' folk. Talia learns to use her Gifts in Arrow's Flight, and we are introduced to Ancar and the Hardornen Folk in Arrow's Fall. Yes, Fall gets much plottier. And yes, there are arcy elements like Orthallen.

The simplicity of these books versus the Exile novels is what draws me to them, again and again. I think they are three of the best written novels in the entire Valdemar universe, no joke. AND I AM CLEARLY AN EXPERT.

Okay I think that's all I have to say. Next time: Magic's Pawn, the book that almost literally defined my life in seventh grade.