Who wants to be a Herald? (Mercedes Lackey)

Cafe Society
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Skald’s thread What was the first novel you ever read that left you emotionally exhausted?got me thinking of Mercedes Lackey. As I shared there, my answer is The Last Herald Mage Trilogy (Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise and Magic’s Price). That’s still my favorite trilogy of hers, although I quite like Kerowyn’s Tale, as well. Really, the only ones I can’t get into are the Gryphon ones, and I blame Larry Dixon for that. Seriously, I have a mental speed bump moment every three pages as I stumble on obvious Lackey ideas in Dixon prose.

I love her delicate balance between pandering to every angsty teenager’s wish to be Chosen by a magical being and told they’re really a speshul snowflake, and writing some pretty gritty, grim stuff on the horrors of war and rape. I liked Vanyel’s struggle with his family and homosexuality, but I liked even more that Withen (his horrible father) and Jervis (the abusive armsmaster) ended up being not-so-bad guys in the end. I like that her characters evolve - they don’t change out of nowhere, but they grow as they age and as they interact with other characters. They feel like real people.

I know a lot of people are put off by what they like to call the Magical White Horsies, but I feel like they’re missing some great works because of cheesy covers and a small detail, overall, in the works. Companions are horse shaped because they’re useful that way, as transportation and battle-mates. Other than their shape, they’re not horses, and their shape is incidental to who they are as characters.

More than any other books I’ve read, these are books you literally can’t judge by their covers.

Any thoughts? Feel free to break out of the Valdemar serieses. I’ve just got Vanyel on the brain because I just reread these three. :slight_smile:

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I’ve heard those complains about the Herald trilogy, and I don’t find them legitimate. I always see it as a refusal to suspend one’s disbelief and accept that the world of the story is not the world we live in. And if you’re going to be like that, I don’t understand why you’re reading fantasy at all.

I like that trilogy, as I wrote in the other thread. But the story’s emotionally exhausting (as you wrote there) and for Lackey I prefer the Tarma & Kethry stories, which aren’t quite so demanding. They’re well-done, though.

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Oh, man, the Heralds! Formative works for my sister and me.

My favorites are the Arrows books, particularly Arrows of the Queen, partially just because they were the first ones I read and they imprinted on me in some way, partially because I’ve always had a weakness for school books, and partially because, like any girl who fancies herself underappreciated and misunderstood, I identified with Talia. (I wasn’t, let’s make it clear, any more underappreciated or misunderstood than your average kid, but there’s an age where it’s easy to feel like one is regardless of the truth.)

I think the ones I like best now, as a grownup, are the Tarma and Kethry books… maybe because they’re written about grownups and not adolescents. And have correspondingly less angst for that reason.

Also, I was just writing on someone else’s blog recently that Lackey’s books (and Orson Scott Card’s – weird but true) were the ones that really formed my attitude towards homosexuality… otherwise I lived in a culture that wasn’t really, um, welcoming to alternate lifestyles. I think the best thing Arrows did for me was show me a culture in which not only were there gay people, but it wasn’t a big deal, a much less big deal than the character interactions. Which is the way it should be.

I regret that I didn’t get to the Vanyel books at the right age (neither library nor bookstore had them at the time). I tried reading them recently and failed miserably. They really work best as adolescent books.

I dunno, I kind of see why you might make fun of magical horsies. I mean, they’re horses and not, umm, donkeys, because horses are sort of the speshul snowflake adolescent girl fantasy, right? I totally make fun of Alanna’s sentient cat with the matching violet eyes that match hers. Doesn’t mean I don’t like either the Valdemar books or the Alanna ones, though :slight_smile:

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Oh, high school! Yeah, those tore me the hell up. I started with the Vanyel books, and… damn!

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I thought the Arrows trilogy, the Herald Mage trilogy, and the Tarma & Kethry books were pretty good, for what they were intended to be. Many of the other books – Brightly Burning & Catch a Thief in particular – were horrible, horrible things. But, heck, I read 'em anyway since I used to travel a lot and needed fluff to read.

As for wanting to be a herald… as much as I’d like having a guaranteed nice, guaranteed to like me, My Little Pony of my own. No, I would not like to be a herald. They are intended to throw their lives away. It’s even lampshaded at least once per book. And given the villains facing Valdemar, it’s probably not going to be a pleasant death. I don’t admire people who plan to throw their lives away, even if I might like reading about them.

I’d much rather be a Tale’edras mage or something. Heck, even a mage of one of the nicer schools – White Winds or somesuch. They seem to live much less overwrought lives.

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QFT

Who were those horse-mage people out on the plains? I always wanted to be them, or a Hawkbrother. I was always more on the hawks are cooler than horsies side anyway.

That said, Vanyel’s story tore me out the frame when I read through it the first time. I was in the PERFECT demographic for it, and it hit hard. I suppose I should be somewhat embarrassed by how thoroughly that book destroyed my spirit, but I’m not. Everybody has to have one, and Lackey really worked at it to make that story into that particular type of emotional sledgehammer. That first book was the first time I really understood why some authors are accused of torturing their main characters.

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The Shin’a’in, and yes, they’re pretty cool.

I actually would prefer to be Tayledras myself. But then, I really like plants. :wink:

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The Shina’in aren’t mages, though. They’re forbidden by the Star-Eyed to use arcane magic (as opposed to shamanic magic) because of their entire purpose…to guard dangerous magic. It’s the Tayledras (Hawkbrothers) who are mages.

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The Tayledras mages don’t really have it that much better than Heralds, aside from usually not having to travel as much on the job. Sure, they’ve got posh Vales and hertasi to look after their mundane needs, but their work amounts to cleaning up the aftermath of a nuclear war while the mutants try to eat them. The Pelagirs are like Australia on steroids–every damn thing there seems to have fangs, claws, and venom, and wants you dead.

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Man, I was obsessed with those books while I was in high school. Now I read them as a nostalgic experience, but still enjoy them, up until the Storm’s books. They were the last ones that were even remotely enjoyable for me. After those books (and even during), they just went down hill. I read them, but more out of a desperate desire to find one I liked as much as the older stories.

As a total coincidence, I have recently started re-reading them.

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Not anymore. Since the mage storms were ended, there’s no more dangerous magic to guard on the plain, so they can dabble if they want.

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Forgot about that. I’m re-reading the Storms trilogy at the moment…

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Well, yeah, but to get into the Heralds, you pretty much have to be orphaned and horrifically abused, at a minimum. I think Valdemar runs Dickensian orphanages (and child slavery diamond mines, come to think) just to get more Heralds. And I’m pretty sure the entire criminal underground in Haven is either Heralds-in-disguise or Heralds-to-be, as that’s apparently where they all get their leet ninja skillz. And then they go out and make targets of themselves.

The Tale’edras, at least, seem to have relatively normal – if not pampered – upbringings. And though they face dangers, they at least seem somewhat aware and proactive about dealing with it. Unlike the drama-prone idealists in white.

… You know, I think there’d be some real opportunities for a genre-aware villain in Valdemar. If you work to reform the orphanages, clean up the criminals exploiting kids, and stop the child slavery, I’m not sure there’d be any heralds left within ten years to bother you any more.

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Nah, that’s just to get a protagonist slot. Regular bit-player heralds can get in with nothing more than a bit of neglect (though they still tend to die horribly). Kris, for example, was never abused–he was a late child, and his parents tended to be preoccupied and ignore him, but he was fairly pampered otherwise. Dirk even seems to have had a pretty good childhood for someone in a pre-industrial society; he had a big, loving family, all still living during his time in Tortured Talia’s reflected spotlight. For that matter, most of the trainees always seemed to have some sort of home to go to on the Midwinter break, and were eager to do so. Apparently, life at home wasn’t bad for them.

It does make me wonder a bit what Valdemarans would evolve into if they were isolated. They consistently take the most idealistic, altruistic people in the country (as well as most of those with psychic talents) and put them in a job that strongly discourages them from having kids, and in which they are likely to die early. If they didn’t have an open immigration policy, they might be a nation of sociopathic mundanes by now.

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I like Lackey’s Valdemar books, but wouldn’t want to a Herald. Way too dangerous. And for that matter, the place is preindustrial, so the place is going to be uncomfortable, with few amenities and limited entertainment even when you aren’t being shot at. They no doubt don’t even have toilet paper.

Also, most of what they face are animals, mages with inferior training and disordered magic; Heralds are more likely to go up against powerful nobles, armies, and conspiracies. And most of the time a Tayledras clan can work as a group against the occasional major threat, while Heralds have a strong tendency to end up having to deal with problems with one or two Heralds.

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I read the Arrows trilogy, and I have to say that even though as a child I had fantasized about a magical white horse who loved and understood me (before Lackey even started writing commercially) the stories felt very over the top to me. I could not really get into the stories. Not because of an inability or unwillingness to suspend disbelief, but because they just aren’t that convincing. I mean, I read the Fables comic series, I cut my teeth on Andre Norton, I read all kinds of fantasy…and fantasy has to be self consistent, first and foremost. One of my biggest gripes about Diana Wynne Jones’ stories was the way that she always had some sort of Authority Figures swoop in at the last moment to set everything straight. I love her work, I just thought that she couldn’t wrap up her stories properly without bringing in People From The Upper Room, or Old Gods/Dragons, or whatever. My point is, I can and do get totally wrapped up in fantasy settings…if the author has done a competent job. If the author has continuity problems, if a character acts one way one time but another way another time simply because it’s more convenient for the author, if the author uses too much handwavium, I am violently thrown out of the story, and I don’t like it.

Lackey doesn’t do it for me, and neither do her horses. Yeah, having a companion who is also transportation is nice…but I’d feel uneasy about riding a sentient being. It’s been a while since I’ve read that trilogy, and it’s one of the few books that I’ve actually sold back to the bookstore, because I had to force my way through it. I wanted to give it a chance, and I think that I did give it a fair shot. But no, I’m not fascinated by either the world or the characters.

Edit: It’s quite possible that if I’d first read the books as a preteen, that I would have loved them, and I might even feel some nostalgia for them now. But that didn’t happen.

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I started with the Last Herald Mage trilogy in early high school, and loved it. It also had a fairly significant impact on me. I also quite liked the Tarma, Kethryn, and Kerowyn books. I found the Arrows trilogy was ok at best, but they were the authors first books in the universe, and I read them after I had already read some of the later books.