When I first read Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey, I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. Being used to her trilogies for years, it felt odd to contemplate reading a standalone. Even her book By the Sword was more of a continuation of previous books and a bridge between two trilogies…
As happens sometimes with even our favorite authors, my initial impressions of the Owl trilogy weren’t the best. I loved that Mercedes Lackey showed us an unfamiliar area of Valdemar than previously explored in it, but some characters rubbed me the wrong way. All right. The main character annoyed the hell out of me in…
Sometimes, the most interesting characters are the ones who aren’t “heroic” characters yet who save the world, anyway. Set a character like that into a world literally dissolving into chaos, and anything is possible. The Mage Storms trilogy takes several of those characters and gives them a nearly impossible task: work together to save the…
Even in fantasy, having a non-human main character is unusual. There are plenty of great examples, but it’s far from the norm. Even rarer still is the non-human main character a mythological creature like a gryphon. Having established gryphons as sentient characters in the Mage Winds trilogy, Lackey and her husband Larry Dixon bring the…
As the first traditional high fantasy quest books Mercedes Lackey introduced me to, the Mage Winds trilogy did not disappoint in the slightest. This was actually my first exposure to high fantasy quests. I know many people of all ages begin their high fantasy journey with the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien, but somehow…
I am one of those people who are entirely susceptible to nostalgia and fan service. I admit this with no shame whatsoever. By the time I reached By the Sword, Lackey’s first standalone book in the world of Velgarth, I was so hooked that it could have been about anything. She and her world had…
Fantasy Recommendation: The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Growing up in a fairly conservative household, the first hints I had that homosexuality was even a possibility were in Mercedes Lackey’s books. There are minor lesbian characters in her Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, which I believe was her testing the waters for her next idea. The Last Herald-Mage…
We rarely get a good example of unrelated women in a platonic, close friendship in older, more traditional fantasy stories. All too often, women are singular additions to a group of men, the love interest of the male main character, or the single character going it alone against seemingly unbeatable odds. While more recent fantasy…
As the first true fantasy series I ever read, many books based in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar hold a special place in my heart. Introduced to the idea of fantasy as a genre in sixth grade through a story in my Language Arts textbook, I immediately went to the library to find more to read by…