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Arrows of the Queen (Heralds of Valdemar Book 01) by Mercedes Lackey

Description: Chosen by the Companion Rolan, a mystical horse-like being with powers beyond imagining, Talia, once a runaway, has now become a trainee Herald, destined to become one of the Queens’s own elite guard. For Talia has certain awakening talents of the mind that only a Companion like Rolan can truly sense. But as Talia struggles to master her unique abilities, time is running out. For conspiracy is brewing in Valdemar, a deadly treason which could destroy Queen and kingdom. Opposed by unknown enemies capable of both diabolical magic and treacherous assassination, the Queen must turn to Talia and the Heralds for aid in protecting the realm and insuring the future of the queen’s heir, a child already in danger of becoming bespelled by the Queen’s own foes. Buy From:

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Review:Arrows of the Queen is the first novel published by Mercedes Lackey and it introduces us to Talia who is to become the Queens’ Own Herald.

In this first book in the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, Talia is from the straight-laced Hold families and is brought up to believe that women are somehow inferior than men and is constantly punished because of her unseemly habit of reading and writing. The book covers her life in the Herald Collegium and how she went from an unknown outsider to friend and confidant to most of the Herald circle.

It does a good job of describing how a person might feel when uprooted from their normal life into a life that feels like a a fantasy.

Final Recommendation: A very good read. Its no wonder the book got published. 🙂

Exile’s Valor (Valdemar: Exile Book 02) by Mercedes Lackey

Description: Exile’s Valor continues the tale begun in Exile’s Honor, and shed some light on the courtship, marriage and death of Queen Selenay’s husband, and father of her daughter Elspeth. Buy From:

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Review:In the second book of the Exile series the story of Alberich, the weapon master of Valdemar is continued. The book is set right after the 1st book ended and Selenay, the new Queen is being pressurized into getting married and procreating.

Then along comes a handsome prince who knows exactly what to say and do to make Selenay fall in love with him and marry him. After a whirlwind courtship they marry and soon after that the queen was with child.

The book did spend a lot of time going over the emotions and feelings of the queen and the heralds. Not a lot of focus was given to the other side. At no point was the reader given an insight into the prince’s thoughts and this is not necessary a bad thing.

At the end of the book not all threads are tied up and the book leaves some questions unanswered for the next books in the series. Although this book was written way after the next book in the series it doesn’t contradict any major points in those books.

Final recommendation: A decent read, not as absorbing as the rest of the books but still good.

Take a Thief: A Novel of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Description: Takes a Thief reveals the untold story of Skif- a popular character from Lackey’s first published novel, Arrows of the Queen. Skif is a homeless orphan who lives with a gang of juvenile pickpockets…until he is “Chosen” by one of Valdemar’s magical horses and becomes a Herald serving the Queen… Buy From:

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Review:Take a Thief is a stand alone novel in the world of Valdemar. Like a lot of other novels in the series it focuses on a particular person’s view point to describe a given situation. In ‘Take a Thief’ the person is Skif, who was introduced to us in the very first Valdemar novel (Arrows of the Queen) which coincidentally was the first novel published by Mercedes Lackey.

This book expands the brief history the reader was told in Arrows. However a few things have been changed in this book as compared to the original telling with not a lot of explanation as to why this was. The only possible way (That I can think of) to explain the difference between that story and this one would be that Skif told a false story about his history so that people didn’t know all the skills he had.

As for the timeline the book is set somewhere in between Exile’s Valor and the Arrows of the Queen Trilogy. Exile’s valor was published after this one so not a lot of events from that book was referenced to in this one.

I really like Lackey’s style of writing and her way of describing the life of a dirt poor person without glamorizing it (making them into the noble poor) or making it too gritty and depressing.

Final recommendation: Great read.

Exile’s Honor (Valdemar: Exile Book 01) by Mercedes Lackey

Description: Trained from childhood in the arts of war, Alberich strives to walk a careful path between obedience to the priests of Vkandis Sunlord and fairness to the soldiers under his command and the people of his native land of Karse. His attempts to hide his heretical gift of precognition, however, earn him a sentence of death by fire, thwarted by a bold rescue seemingly engineered by his faithful white battle steed-in actuality one of the Companions of the Heralds of Valdemar. Lackey continues her popular Valdemar series with the story of Alberich, Weaponsmaster and Queen’s Champion of a land he was taught to fear and hate, as he struggles to redefine the meaning of the honor he holds so dear while learning to accept the magic he once tried to conceal. Buy From:

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Review:Exile’s Honor is the story of weapons-master Alberich who was the first Karsite ever to become an Herald.

The book starts off with Alberich’s last mission in Karse where he uses his hidden gift for foresight to prevent a bandit raid. Unfortunately for him the Priests didn’t agree that the foresight was a gift and instead tried to burn him as a witch. Fortunately for Alberich the Companion Kantor rescued him from the fire and took him to Valdemar to be trained.

The book does a good job of showing Alberich’s emotional and mental uncertainty on finding out that pretty much everything he had been taught about the Heralds was untrue without getting too depressing or melodramatic. This was a good thing because if he had accepted the change without any problems then he wouldn’t have become one of the more beloved characters in the series. After all recovering from a complete shift of your world view does take time.

It was initially written as a stand-alone novel but it fits quite well with the other books in the series. Exile’s Valor continues the tale started in this book but even if you don’t read that one you can read and enjoy this one without any problems.

Final Recommendation: A great read.

By the Sword (Vows and Honor Book 04) by Mercedes Lackey

Description: Granddaughter of the sorceress Kethry, daughter of a noble house, Kerowyn had been forced to run the family keep since her mother’s untimely death. Yet now at last her brother was preparing to wed, and when his bride became the lady of the keep, Kerowyn could return to her true enjoyments – training horses and hunting. But all Kerowyn’s hopes and plans were shattered when her ancestral home was attacked, her father slain, her brother wounded, and his fiance kidnapped. Driven by desperation and the knowledge that a sorcerer had led the attack, Kerowyn sought her grandmother Kethry’s aid, a journey which would prove but the first step on the road to the fulfillment on her destiny. For facing her family’s foes would transform Kerowyn into an outsider in her own land, a warrior bound to the spell blade Need, and a mercenary forced to choose between loyalty to her comrades in arms and the Herald of Valdemar, whom she had rescued and who in his turn had helped to awaken her to the true meaning of love and to her own unique powers of magic. Buy From:

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The 4th book in the series ‘By the Sword’ features Kerowyn, the grand-daughter of the Sorceress Kethry and covers her adventures from her brutal introduction to warfare to her rise to a herald of Valdemar.

The book is an awesome read and sort of continues where the previous books ended but from a perspective of a much younger person than the previous books. It is divided into three parts and each part covers a specific phase in the life of Kero.

The last 1/3 of the book retells the tale of Valdemar’s war with Ancar but from a different perspective.

I liked the way the book talks about mercenaries and the kind of work they do. It does tend to glamorize the mercenary life a bit but has a lot of healthy doses of the non-glamorous portion of the war (the dying and killing).

Final Recommendation: A great read. Gives you a lot of background on another secondary character from the Valdemar Universe

Oathbreakers (Vows and Honor Book 02) by Mercedes Lackey

Description: When Idra, leader of the crack mercenaries known as the Sunhawks, failed to return from a journey to her home kingdom of Rethwellan, Tarma and Kethry, warrior and mage, set out in search of their vanished leader. Sisters of sword and spell, their fates bound together by a Goddess-sworn oath, they were eternally pledged to fight the forces of evil. And evil had indeed cast its shadow over Rethwellan. Idra, so they were told, had left long ago on a search for a legendary magical sword which could reveal which of her two brothers was meant to become the new king. With the princess gone, her younger brother had been branded an outlaw and her older brother had claimed the throne. Both instinct and mage lore told Kethry and Tarma that all was not as it seemed, that both Idra and her people were in terrible jeopardy. Yet would their Goddess-given powers, aided by those of a Herald of Valdemar, proves strong enough to break the dark enchantment possessing this land? Buy From:

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The second book in the Vows and Honor series finds Tarma and Kethry, warrior and mage in the SunHawks, a mercenary company. There they learn a bit more about command and how to delegate.

The book doesn’t cover a lot of their life in the Sun Hawks, just enough to get them established and give a foundation for the next part of the story. In all a good way to structure a book.

This book is not like the first one where it felt like the book was basically a lot of short stories strung together. In this one there is only one story and as the book progresses they both gain in skill and experience.

I liked this book better than the first one. For some reason I rarely like reading short stories or anthologies. So this book was a lot of fun and more to my taste. Although I have read the book a couple of times before it was still interesting enough for me to read it completely in one sitting.

The book explains how Tarma and Kethry managed to get a grant for land that they required to setup their school and why the monarchy of Rethwellan was indebted to the two of them (That becomes important later in the series)

Final recommendation: A good read.

The Oathbound (Vows and Honor Book 01) by Mercedes Lackey

Description: Bound by oath to each other and to the Goddess, the swordswoman Tarma and the wizard Kethry begin a joint career as mercenaries in the constant struggle for justice in a land where demons come in human and not-so-human forms. The author of the “Heroes of Valdemar” trilogy begins a new series involving a pair of likeable, savvy heroines. Sword and sorcery with warmth and humor make this a story that will appeal to most fantasy fans. Buy From:

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The Oathbound is the first book in the Vows and Honor Quadrilogy that tells us how Tarma and Kethry (Swordsworn and Mage) met and how they built up a reputation as reliable mercenaries over a period of time.

The book is a decent read but while the stories are fun some parts of the book appear disjointed, meaning some parts read like they were originally separate stories that were stitched together to make a book. For example in one of chapters Kethry and Tarma explain again how they defeated a particular enemy even though that was just covered in the previous chapter. There are many small instances like this one that break the flow of the book.

This is not that surprising though ’cause if I remember correctly most of the stories in this book were earlier published as short stories in one of the sword and sorcery magazines.

The book is one of Lackey’s earlier work and it is quite easy to see how her writing has evolved from this book to her latest works. Not that this book is bad, just that her later works are more polished.

Final Recommendation: Good read. Gives you the back story of some of the secondary characters in the main stream Valdemar books.

The Desert Spear (Demon Series Book 02) by Peter V. Brett

Description: The sun is setting on humanity. The night now belongs to voracious demons that arise as the sun sets, preying upon a dwindling population forced to cower behind ancient and half-forgotten symbols of power. These wards alone can keep the demons at bay, but legends tell of a Deliverer: a general – some would say prophet – who once bound all mankind into a single force that defeated the demons. Those times, if they ever existed, are long past. The demons are back, and the return of the Deliverer is just another myth . . . or is it? Out of the desert rides Ahmann Jardir, who has forged the warlike desert tribes of Krasia into a demon-killing army. He has proclaimed himself Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer, and he carries ancient weapons – a spear and a crown – that give credence to his claim. Sworn to follow the path of the first Deliverer, he has come north to bring the scattered city-states of the green lands together in a war against demonkind – whether they like it or not. But the northerners claim their own Deliverer. His name was Arlen, but all know him now as the Warded Man: a dark, forbidding figure whose skin is tattooed with wards so powerful they make him a match for any demon. The Warded Man denies that he is the Deliverer, but his actions speak louder than words, for he teaches men and women to face their fears and stand fast against the creatures that have tormented them for centuries. Once the Shar’Dama Ka and the Warded Man were friends, brothers in arms. Now they are fierce adversaries. Caught between them are Renna, a young woman pushed to the edge of human endurance; Leesha, a proud and beautiful healer whose skill in warding surpasses that of the Warded Man himself; and Rojer, a traveling fiddler whose uncanny music can soothe the demons – or stir them into such frenzy that they attack one another. Yet as old allegiances are tested and fresh alliances forged, all are blissfully unaware of the appearance of a new breed of demon, more intelligent – and deadly – than any that have come before. Buy From:

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The Desert Spear is the second book in the Demon Trilogy. The book is a good read with pretty intricate plotlines and story. It is a rare author that can manage so many view points in the same book without loosing the reader but Brett manages it quite well.. Infact I only realized that he was juggling 8 different view points when I read the Acknowledgment section of the book where he mentioned it.

One point that did annoy me a bit was his tendency to switch the name used for a character from his last name to his first name all of a sudden and back for no particular reason. I had to go back to a previous chapter to figure out who Ahmann was and how come everyone was deferring to him all of a sudden instead of Jardir (They were the same person)

Other thank that the storyline was good and the characters well written.

Final recommendation: A must read. You should read the 1st book before you read this one but that’s not required however you will gain a greater grasp of the story if you do.