Owlsight, by Mercedes Lackey

  

Read
In small chunks as breaks between homework.

Bottom Line
As with Owlflight, not her best work.  Worth reading if you've gotten through Owlflight and are curious to find out what happened to Darian.


Full Review
This books picks up about four years after Owlflight ends.  Darian has spend the intervening years with the Hawkbrothers, learning a bit more about controlling his mage gift and growing from a constantly whining teenager into an only sometimes whining adult.  Meanwhile, as Darian's been traipsing about the countryside, Keisha has stepped into the role of village healer.  She's got the healing gift, but without training she's in danger of going nuts.

The main problem with this book is that it doesn't get going until about two-thirds of the way through.  That's right.  Most of this book is exposition - interesting exposition, to be sure, but nothing really happens until the same barbarian tribes that trashed the village the first time around are spotted coming back.  Once Darian, Keisha, and the Hawkbrothers meet the barbarians, the story really starts to pick up.  Unfortunately, all the action takes place in a few chapters at the end of the book.

At the end of the day, I find myself hoping that the last book in the trilogy is going to focus in on the interaction between these two different cultures.  Otherwise, I'm afraid I may be in for another disappointment.

Owlflight, by Mercedes Lackey

  

 Read
Mostly on BART

Bottom Line
Quite frankly, not one of her best.  I'll probably end up reading the rest of the series simply to finish it up, but as of right now I'd advise you to skip it.

Full Review
Chronologically, it follows the events in the Mage Storms series.  It's billed as a stand alone, but I think that without having read some of the other Valdemar books it would be a bit confusing.  The story is classic Lackey and follows a teenage protagonist on a journey of self discovery.  That's pretty much it in terms of plot - definitely not as much of a page turner as some of her earlier novels.

The first half of the book is spent in teenage misery, which tends to be reflected in long rants and whines by the main character.  It's a rather long set up for what happens in the rest of the book (and in the following two books) that could probably been cut to a rather short chapter or prologue.  Once Darian's village is burned and he's rescued by the Hawkbrothers things get a bit more interesting, although the whining continues.  All of which means that the readable parts of the book are rather slim, especially if you do like me and start flipping pages when Darian starts in on one of his self pitying inner monologues.

My guess is that she's simply running out of material for the Valdemar novels.  I think this is borne out by the fact that she hasn't written a Valdemar book in a while - the newest ones have focused on the Elemental Mages series as well as the rather fun Obsidian Trillogy with James Mallory.

Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey

Read
Another Half Price Special (although I have vague recollections of having read it several years ago).

Bottom Line
A great deal of fun, even if there's not much substantive weight to it.  A great book for an airplane ride.  I'm labeling it YA with some hesitation, because it was obviously meant for an adult audience.  The protagonist, however, is someone that the YA audience will identify and sympathize with.

Full Review
Mercedes Lackey has created the quintessential fantasy novel universe in the imagined kingdom of Valdemar.  Complete with magic, a kingdom perpetually on the edge of disaster, and an intrepid band of (sometimes) unlikely heroes, the Valdemar novels draw the reader in with their fast paced plots and strongly determined characters.

Arrows of the Queen is, I believe, one of the earlier novels.  As such, it not only makes a great introductory read to the world of the author but also provides a stand-alone experience that the later novels lack.  [Note that this is the first of a three-part series, and while the other novels in the series have prologues that attempt to catch the reader up on the action, the entire series is best read in order.]

The main character of Arrows is Talia, a plucky thirteen year old girl who'd rather be reading or running around outdoors than staying inside and behaving like a properly subordinate female.  This attitude gets her in frequent trouble with her family; luckily for Talia (and in the deus ex machina fashion so common to novels of the genre) she is whisked away in an unlikely rescue and brought to the capital of Valdemar.  There, she is surprised and somewhat shocked to find her curiosity and intelligence are considered a boon rather than a problem.

Of course, it's a good thing that she's a bright child, because she's soon thrown into all sorts of problems that, quite frankly, a thirteen year old, even this precocious thirteen year old, would be rather ill-equipped to handle.  The brilliance of the book is that the character is so well written that most readers won't stop to question how Talia is managing all these problems because they're frantically flipping pages to discover what happens.

The ability to tell a compelling story is what really sets a Mercedes Lackey book apart from much of the fantasy fiction currently on the shelves.  I'll admit that sometimes the teenage angst/self reflection got to be a bit much at times (another reason I'm giving this the YA label), but the well written plot more than makes up for it.

The Rolling Stones, by Robert Heinlein

 
Read
In Half-Price, over the course of several Mondays.

Bottom Line
Very definitely young Heinlein, but fun to read nevertheless.  While this one doesn't contain any of the great leaps of imagination found in his later books, it plants the seeds for later novels (think The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).  Furthermore, although it's billed as juvenalia, there's no reason why adults wouldn't enjoy sitting down with this one.

Full Review
In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that I'm somewhat of a rabid Heinlein fan. My introduction to his fiction came in the form of The Cat Who Walked through Walls. Despite the fact that I was miffed by the ending (ending? there's no ending to that darn book!), I kept reading.

Stones, unlike some of Heinlein's later work, stands fully on its own. It requires no familiarity with the "Future History" novels, although readers familiar with them will be pleased to find the indomitable Hazel Stone as well as those mischievous twins Castor and Pollux.

Heinlein described the novel as about a pair of entrepreneurial twins who are always getting into trouble and whose grandmother is always getting them out. This is accurate, so far as back cover descriptions go, but it fails to convey the core of the novel. This is, at heart, a book about frontiers, about civilization, and about the choices between the two. The Stones set off from Luna City - that once wild outpost, now safely tamed and therefore no fun at all - to Mars, intending to satisfy the familial wanderlust. Once at Mars, however, they discover that it, like Luna City, has been taken over by the bureaucrats. Off again, this time to the asteroid belt, where at last they find the wild frontier town they've been looking for. When we leave the Stones, they are setting off again, this time for Venus. The implication, of course, is that there will always be one more outpost of civilization in the wilderness, one more frontier to explore. The excitement, of course, lies in the adventures the family finds along the way - everything from a nasty outbreak of space measles to a run-in with the long arm of the law.

Structurally speaking, there's more going on here than a rip-roaring plot and a rambunctious bunch of characters. The plot, which has enough twists and turns to keep the reader turning pages as quickly as she can read them, flows naturally from the characters rather than attempting to push them around. This is intended for a middle grade audience, so there's nothing very heavy here - a far cry from the almost existential questioning of Stranger or the philosophical mutterings of Lazarus Long. Even so, it previews the question of when too much civilization becomes a bad thing.

Finally, keep an eye out for the technology. Heinlein's predictions, while a bit off the wall in terms of Mars and Venus, are surprisingly accurate on just about everything else.