“The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire?”
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After suffering through C.S. Pacat’s Captive Prince trilogy last year I had told myself I’d never read another gay novel written by a heterosexual woman… but here I am. Mercedes Lackey’s highly acclaimed Last Herald-Mage Trilogy comprises the novels Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise, and Magic’s Price (released between 1989-1991), and tells the story of Vanyel Ashkevron, the last herald-mage of the fantasy world Valdemar. I was so excited to dive into this series (despite it being written by a heterosexual woman) because it’s received critical acclaim, won numerous awards, and has such good ratings everywhere, and having recently come out myself, I wanted to dive into gay-themed fantasy, and man there’s slim pickings out there. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this series. Lackey’s writing felt very childish, almost like I was reading a YA novel, and that’s not something I was looking for. The characters are incredibly flat, the plot is dull and nothing really matters in the end, and overall it felt like a waste of time reading it. I actually took a break between reading Magic’s Promise and Magic’s Price because I couldn’t even force myself to continue with the series, and when I picked it up again, only six months later, I had completely forgotten what had happened in the first two books, and who any of the characters were… and that’s never a good sign.
While I think there were a lot of flaws in these novels, I kept track of a few that really stuck out to me. The first was the relationship between Vanyel and Tylendal from the first novel, Magic’s Pawn. Without giving away spoilers, Vanyel starts the series off as a very cocky, prim boy who slowly comes to term with his sexuality after falling for Tylendal, a fellow student at his Mage school. And while the relationship was an important marker for growth in Vanyel, there really wasn’t much build between the two characters. One day they met, thought the other was cute, and them BAM, they’re in love. There was no show, no development, and their “love” seemed very childish and, honestly, pathetic and whiney. Of course, this relationship ends tragically… incredibly tragically, but who didn’t see that coming.
In the second book, Lackey throws new characters at us. While Vanyel is still the whiney main, she tosses in new close friends Randale and Shavri, and expects us to immediately sympathize and have feelings for them, simply because Vanyal does. As well, the plot makes little to no sense. The villain doesn’t appear until the very end, and there’s absolutely no build-up to an ending that… really, I didn’t care about. And by the third book I was so done with Lackey’s plot and writing, that I was just happy to be done it.
There is SO little depth to these books, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Every character is a stereotype, especially Vanyel, and I saw the exact same thing in Pacat’s trilogy… Once more, I’m vowing to never read a gay-themed fantasy by a heterosexual woman.
