Gratuitous Valdemar Post
Jul. 7th, 2004 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asePromised followup to the June booklist. Apparently, Lackey's writing inspires me.
The more I think about that, the more it chips away at my brain. Excuse me while I flee to the nonfiction and highbrow "lit" fiction.
I had a few minutes before I had to check out and hop the bus home, and I was a little annoyed by earlier reading in the month, so I started skimming Magic's Pawn to see if Lackey was attacked by the Author Emeritus bug or if my mid-teen memories inflated her novels' worth.
To my shock - no. And yes.
The LHM trilogy is dripping with the unhappiness, the grief, the true and terrible lonely ANGST!!! of being Vanyel Ashkevron. At the same time, it may be the pivotal story in the Valdemar series: it was written and published after the Arrows trilogy, and sets up significant historical background for most of the Valdemar-centric Velgarth novels, set many years later.
The trilogy starts with Vanyel’s father and his father's cruel armsmaster out to make life miserable, he gets "exiled" to the capital, he's miserably lonely because he can't find any friends and he has a crush on his aunt's student, which is Bad because they're both boys. Whoops. And then he confesses his crush, the Love is True, there's several months of blissful happiness and then everything goes back to being terribly lonely and angsty for Vanyel. For the rest of the Magic's Pawn and large chunks of Magic's Promise. Things cheer up a great deal in the first half or so of Magic’s Price, but a string of attacks and deaths make the rest of the novel fairly grim, for Lackey, and the angst returns in force after the death of Our Protagonist.
The three books hold up to rereading remarkably well; I get the impression that some serious thought went into the overarching plot early in the writing process. Especially suggestive is the use of one of my favorite plot devices ever, the shifty prophetic dream. (This has, of course, nothing to do with Babylon 5, the Londo-G'Kar arc, and War Without End part two. Or early imprinting. Why, never!) The revenge plot in Magic's Price hangs together remarkably well for me, too. Again, probably early programming coming to the fore: protagonists engaging in deception for fairly selfish reasons and having the Plan blow up in their face. I love narratives that involve plans not working as intended way too much. Magic's Promise has actual plot, which is slightly better than I remember it. I find myself much more forgiving of Jervis' character rehabilitation (21 - 14 =) seven years later. (It's been seven years? Migahd.) Magic's Price is kind of oddly textured: people who have read other Valdemar novels know that Vanyel and several other characters have to die by the end of the novel, the King is slowly dying of an unnamed and very painful disease, holy war threatens Valdemar's Karsite border, and Lackey's chosen to foreground the (doomed) romantic plot. Which eventually also ends in bereavement. Sort of.
Considering how much of the trilogy is soaked with character grief, it's remarkably fun. The men are handsome, the women are understanding, the Heralds honest, the themes direct and sympathetic, the villains equally direct and very unsympathetic. Characters tend to be either Good or Evil, but a number of Our Heroes are nicely quirky and flawed in ways convenient to the narrative. (And Savil just rocks. She's a dynamic female character who's not pretty, not young and not entangled in a romance. Her dry and slightly tart personality’s a relief in a trilogy with several soppy lifebonded couples running around.) The limited cast of characters and focus works. In at least one interview I found (in, IIRC, the Valdemar Companion... amazing what you find when you're browsing), Lackey's admitted she doesn't do "cast of thousands" novels well; the later Valdemar "Wind" and "Storm" trilogies really suffer from this. I hope that judicious use of the authorial axe to reduces the size of the problem in future Lackey novels; plot-motivated character death is a powerful tool. As in, say, Magic’s Price.
I find Magic’s Price to be a book of extremes: either I really enjoy the narrative or I dislike it so much I want to rewrite it. The romance is cute. The reincarnation thread is awkward. The scenes where these facts intersect makes me wince. It's such a visceral reaction that I have trouble articulating why it doesn't work well. I think it's a combination of worldbuilding and presentation: reincarnation is mentioned, but largely glossed over everywhere but here, and everyone gets so "oh, it's Tylendel's soul! Awwww!" without giving much consideration as to why this particular deceased soul would turn around and jump back into the stew of mortality. I'm laboring under the assumption that such a fast turnaround in the Afterlife is not normal; between Vanyel, Savil and the Tayledas I'm surprised someone didn't raise any questions about what might have prompted that.
(If someone digs up an author comment to the effect that life is like riding a horse, you're expected to get right back on, I take back that last paragraph. Just give me a cite.)
Of the entire trilogy, the last third or so of Magic's Price gets the most extreme like/dislike reactions from me. I suspect some of that is the swing from romance to the tragic closing action, and rather a lot more is directly related to my desire to say to Vanyel, "yes, rush off baying 'revenge! revenge!' It worked so well for Tylendel." The "not thinking things though" stuff that make Tylendel's vengeance and bloody smackdown a satisfying narrative doesn't work for Vaneyl's. One was an attempt by a seventeen year old Herald-trainee and his fairly self-centered younger boyfriend; the other's the work of a mature, adult Herald-Mage and a "mature for his age" (claims the story) eighteen year old. Vanyel, at least, really should know better than to go riding out mad for blood. He doesn't act like it. And he pays for it.
Side rant: And why do an overwhelming number of Lackey's hero-protagonists get raped? Why? I'm missing the narrative point here, if there is one besides Lackey's desire to break her characters and grind them into powder. (N.B.: In my teens I had the misfortune to run through several Lackey novels back to back with Catherine Asaro's first three or four Skolia novels, and then pick up Elizabeth Moon's Once a Hero. I think that was my first experience with the passionate desire to hurl a book across the room. Or out the window. The entire experience left me with the fairly unsupported opinion that authors who plan to have their characters sexually assaulted should also make plans for those characters to spend the rest oftheir lives the book in heavy therapy. Which does not mean woobie hurt/comfort sex. Sorry.)
The ambush-and-capture sequence is my least favorite part of the entire trilogy. These days it merits an eye-roll and power skim.
There isn't much left after that. Time out for recuperation, a quick walk to Crookback Pass, and then everyone's fates are set. I'd forgotten how magnificent Yfandes' arrival at Vanyel and Leareth's confrontation is. Fearless to the last. And - guilty confession - Stefen rushing back to the battlefield is one of the very few scenes in a novel that almost made me cry. Last stands and grieving lovers apparently get to me more than I'd like to admit.
(Random thought: doing a Five Things fic for the LHM trilogy - "Five Roads to Crookback Pass" - would be really cool. Kill off or revive five characters and see who winds up facing Leareth, and who lives or dies, and how. It's the sort of limited scale AU I love playing thought games with. Too bad Lackey's taken a leaf from MZB's book and gone all death on unauthorized fic.)
The LHM trilogy is one of the two “backstory” trilogies Lackey’s done in Velgarth, the world the Valdemar books are set in. The other is the Gryphon trilogy, describing the end and fallout of the ancient Mage Wars. I’d love to see a comparison of the two; I love backstory and worldbuilding way too much, and both trilogies indulge in those activities.
The problem with this is that the author occasionally doesn't think things out the way some of the fans might. There’s some unintentionally Really Stupid Stuff, like the magic-monitoring spell that’s established in Magic’s Price probably unintentionally drove more than one mage-gifted Valdemar citizen mad between LHM and either the Winds or Storm trilogy, when it finally was dismantled. That Lackey never brings up the possibility suggests she never considered it. And there’s some missed opportunities: it would have been narratively elegant (is that even a term?) if Randale’s progressive illness was caused by Leareth, as part of his overarching “weaken and conquer” plan.
Final thoughts: Lackey is not Deep and Profound. She plays excellently with emotions and wish fulfilment when she sets limits on her characters, but tends to play up the melodrama and "lovers' misunderstandings" (particularly in the Arrows and Gryphon trilogies) to a degree that occasionally annoys me. The Arrows and LHM trilogies, as well as the Tarma and Kethry stories, work as "fun" reading, but books written later suffer from the Lackey's attempts to make a single epic out of the many elements - Heralds, bespelled swords, magery, crazy evil undead wizards, gryphons and the rest - introduced in earlier books. It's like trying to combine lemon cheesecake and Boston cream pie: there's just too much going on. It's a relief to know Lackey's taking a break from writing in the extended Velgarth world, which will hopefully let her write to her strengths.
The more I think about that, the more it chips away at my brain. Excuse me while I flee to the nonfiction and highbrow "lit" fiction.
I had a few minutes before I had to check out and hop the bus home, and I was a little annoyed by earlier reading in the month, so I started skimming Magic's Pawn to see if Lackey was attacked by the Author Emeritus bug or if my mid-teen memories inflated her novels' worth.
To my shock - no. And yes.
The LHM trilogy is dripping with the unhappiness, the grief, the true and terrible lonely ANGST!!! of being Vanyel Ashkevron. At the same time, it may be the pivotal story in the Valdemar series: it was written and published after the Arrows trilogy, and sets up significant historical background for most of the Valdemar-centric Velgarth novels, set many years later.
The trilogy starts with Vanyel’s father and his father's cruel armsmaster out to make life miserable, he gets "exiled" to the capital, he's miserably lonely because he can't find any friends and he has a crush on his aunt's student, which is Bad because they're both boys. Whoops. And then he confesses his crush, the Love is True, there's several months of blissful happiness and then everything goes back to being terribly lonely and angsty for Vanyel. For the rest of the Magic's Pawn and large chunks of Magic's Promise. Things cheer up a great deal in the first half or so of Magic’s Price, but a string of attacks and deaths make the rest of the novel fairly grim, for Lackey, and the angst returns in force after the death of Our Protagonist.
The three books hold up to rereading remarkably well; I get the impression that some serious thought went into the overarching plot early in the writing process. Especially suggestive is the use of one of my favorite plot devices ever, the shifty prophetic dream. (This has, of course, nothing to do with Babylon 5, the Londo-G'Kar arc, and War Without End part two. Or early imprinting. Why, never!) The revenge plot in Magic's Price hangs together remarkably well for me, too. Again, probably early programming coming to the fore: protagonists engaging in deception for fairly selfish reasons and having the Plan blow up in their face. I love narratives that involve plans not working as intended way too much. Magic's Promise has actual plot, which is slightly better than I remember it. I find myself much more forgiving of Jervis' character rehabilitation (21 - 14 =) seven years later. (It's been seven years? Migahd.) Magic's Price is kind of oddly textured: people who have read other Valdemar novels know that Vanyel and several other characters have to die by the end of the novel, the King is slowly dying of an unnamed and very painful disease, holy war threatens Valdemar's Karsite border, and Lackey's chosen to foreground the (doomed) romantic plot. Which eventually also ends in bereavement. Sort of.
Considering how much of the trilogy is soaked with character grief, it's remarkably fun. The men are handsome, the women are understanding, the Heralds honest, the themes direct and sympathetic, the villains equally direct and very unsympathetic. Characters tend to be either Good or Evil, but a number of Our Heroes are nicely quirky and flawed in ways convenient to the narrative. (And Savil just rocks. She's a dynamic female character who's not pretty, not young and not entangled in a romance. Her dry and slightly tart personality’s a relief in a trilogy with several soppy lifebonded couples running around.) The limited cast of characters and focus works. In at least one interview I found (in, IIRC, the Valdemar Companion... amazing what you find when you're browsing), Lackey's admitted she doesn't do "cast of thousands" novels well; the later Valdemar "Wind" and "Storm" trilogies really suffer from this. I hope that judicious use of the authorial axe to reduces the size of the problem in future Lackey novels; plot-motivated character death is a powerful tool. As in, say, Magic’s Price.
I find Magic’s Price to be a book of extremes: either I really enjoy the narrative or I dislike it so much I want to rewrite it. The romance is cute. The reincarnation thread is awkward. The scenes where these facts intersect makes me wince. It's such a visceral reaction that I have trouble articulating why it doesn't work well. I think it's a combination of worldbuilding and presentation: reincarnation is mentioned, but largely glossed over everywhere but here, and everyone gets so "oh, it's Tylendel's soul! Awwww!" without giving much consideration as to why this particular deceased soul would turn around and jump back into the stew of mortality. I'm laboring under the assumption that such a fast turnaround in the Afterlife is not normal; between Vanyel, Savil and the Tayledas I'm surprised someone didn't raise any questions about what might have prompted that.
(If someone digs up an author comment to the effect that life is like riding a horse, you're expected to get right back on, I take back that last paragraph. Just give me a cite.)
Of the entire trilogy, the last third or so of Magic's Price gets the most extreme like/dislike reactions from me. I suspect some of that is the swing from romance to the tragic closing action, and rather a lot more is directly related to my desire to say to Vanyel, "yes, rush off baying 'revenge! revenge!' It worked so well for Tylendel." The "not thinking things though" stuff that make Tylendel's vengeance and bloody smackdown a satisfying narrative doesn't work for Vaneyl's. One was an attempt by a seventeen year old Herald-trainee and his fairly self-centered younger boyfriend; the other's the work of a mature, adult Herald-Mage and a "mature for his age" (claims the story) eighteen year old. Vanyel, at least, really should know better than to go riding out mad for blood. He doesn't act like it. And he pays for it.
Side rant: And why do an overwhelming number of Lackey's hero-protagonists get raped? Why? I'm missing the narrative point here, if there is one besides Lackey's desire to break her characters and grind them into powder. (N.B.: In my teens I had the misfortune to run through several Lackey novels back to back with Catherine Asaro's first three or four Skolia novels, and then pick up Elizabeth Moon's Once a Hero. I think that was my first experience with the passionate desire to hurl a book across the room. Or out the window. The entire experience left me with the fairly unsupported opinion that authors who plan to have their characters sexually assaulted should also make plans for those characters to spend the rest of
The ambush-and-capture sequence is my least favorite part of the entire trilogy. These days it merits an eye-roll and power skim.
There isn't much left after that. Time out for recuperation, a quick walk to Crookback Pass, and then everyone's fates are set. I'd forgotten how magnificent Yfandes' arrival at Vanyel and Leareth's confrontation is. Fearless to the last. And - guilty confession - Stefen rushing back to the battlefield is one of the very few scenes in a novel that almost made me cry. Last stands and grieving lovers apparently get to me more than I'd like to admit.
(Random thought: doing a Five Things fic for the LHM trilogy - "Five Roads to Crookback Pass" - would be really cool. Kill off or revive five characters and see who winds up facing Leareth, and who lives or dies, and how. It's the sort of limited scale AU I love playing thought games with. Too bad Lackey's taken a leaf from MZB's book and gone all death on unauthorized fic.)
The LHM trilogy is one of the two “backstory” trilogies Lackey’s done in Velgarth, the world the Valdemar books are set in. The other is the Gryphon trilogy, describing the end and fallout of the ancient Mage Wars. I’d love to see a comparison of the two; I love backstory and worldbuilding way too much, and both trilogies indulge in those activities.
The problem with this is that the author occasionally doesn't think things out the way some of the fans might. There’s some unintentionally Really Stupid Stuff, like the magic-monitoring spell that’s established in Magic’s Price probably unintentionally drove more than one mage-gifted Valdemar citizen mad between LHM and either the Winds or Storm trilogy, when it finally was dismantled. That Lackey never brings up the possibility suggests she never considered it. And there’s some missed opportunities: it would have been narratively elegant (is that even a term?) if Randale’s progressive illness was caused by Leareth, as part of his overarching “weaken and conquer” plan.
Final thoughts: Lackey is not Deep and Profound. She plays excellently with emotions and wish fulfilment when she sets limits on her characters, but tends to play up the melodrama and "lovers' misunderstandings" (particularly in the Arrows and Gryphon trilogies) to a degree that occasionally annoys me. The Arrows and LHM trilogies, as well as the Tarma and Kethry stories, work as "fun" reading, but books written later suffer from the Lackey's attempts to make a single epic out of the many elements - Heralds, bespelled swords, magery, crazy evil undead wizards, gryphons and the rest - introduced in earlier books. It's like trying to combine lemon cheesecake and Boston cream pie: there's just too much going on. It's a relief to know Lackey's taking a break from writing in the extended Velgarth world, which will hopefully let her write to her strengths.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-08 01:13 am (UTC)I'm shocked nobody commented on this. Possibly because you are Stating the lovely Obvious here, but it's still a very good post.
Leareth? Apparently Lackey gets her character names the same way I do: off the ingredients list of shampoo bottles.
I was reading the books about Alberich; well, I was reading the first one. I thought I was done with Lackey, but I think it was the need-for-LaFollet-analog that I was shooting for when I started reading. It almost worked until the damn self-insert showed up.
On your side rant: Man, I thought I was the only one who wanted to throw Once a Hero out the window. (Esmay Suiza, the knockoff-house version of Honor Harrington...not really, but aiaiaiai does she come off that way, and I wanted to boot her in the head much, much quicker.)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-07-08 01:42 pm (UTC)The posts one slaves over are inevitably the ones no one comments on. It's got to be some sort of blogging law. Possibly if I'd gotten around to tearing apart some of the background assumptions and trying to pull together some sort of proper contextual analysis people would be more interested. (Companions as canonically mind-controlling spirit guardians, and how they pick their Heralds. Unintentional extinction of magery and its impact on Valdemaran technology development, border defenses and foreign relations. Sex without love and its impact on Valdemaran royalty [or, the Second Most Pointless Plot Device Ever and what it says about self-worth in a Lackeyverse; compare and contrast with the novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley]. Isolationism in Velgarth politics: the Shin'a'in, Tayledras and Valdemarans. And, of course, tenability of the selection process for the Monarch's Own Herald: I'm sorry, but WTF? Discuss. All of it. *EG*) At least in hitting me upside the head for thinking too hard. *G*
Leareth? Apparently Lackey gets her character names the same way I do: off the ingredients list of shampoo bottles.
The expensive ones, maybe. The cheap stuff has a lot of methyl-this and tetraoxy-that. But if you think that's bad, avoid the trilogy with the Evil Overlord named Ma'ar. I'm fairly sure that fulfills at least two How Not To Name Characters in Your Fantasy Universe rules.
It almost worked until the damn self-insert showed up.
If you think that's bad, never read this (http://www.mercedeslackey.com/chapters/myste.html).
There's a reason I reread the early trilogies and ignore the later stuff. Lackey can do light and fluffy very well; her attempts at epic leave me cold.
On your side rant: Man, I thought I was the only one who wanted to throw Once a Hero out the window.
It wasn't just me? It wasn't just Moon accidentally hitting a fairly raw spot? People occasionally rec her books in my hearing, but after OaH I put her on my "skip" list. The Speed of Dark, one of her more recent novels, has gotten enough good buzz that I'm tempted to check it out.