Recent Reading

[davidgillon]

Vows and Honor, Mercedes Lackey

I’ve read or re-read pretty much all of Lackey’s Valdemar books over the last year, when I’ve found them in cheap compilations or otherwise on offer on Kindle, the remaining exceptions being the Vanyel and Owl Knight trilogies, and the far distant prequel Griffon Trilogy. Vows and Honor was in that list until I found it when looking for stuff to stuff on my Kindle to read over Christmas.

Vows and Honor collects the Tarma and Kethry stories with which Lackey first broke through into professional publishing, though IIRC the Arrows trilogy were her first novel length works with VandH following later. VandH was originally a duology, but at some point after I first read it she collected the loose stories into an additional volume.

I’m much more critical in my reading nowadays than when I first read these in my late 20s, but some of the things I found slightly offputting might simply be a symptom of fantasy (and societal) expectations in the ‘80s, rather than of Lackey’s developing skill as a writer. So let’s note the overly noble nomads, the cod-medievalisms, occasionally stilted dialogue. and unnecessarily made-up plant etc names here, together with the slightly awkward attempts to be okay with homosexuality* and move on. There’s nothing greatly wrong with VandH or the Arrows trilogy, but her later writing is definitely stronger.

Oathbound

We’re slightly dumped into this in media res, because the story where Tarma and Kethry meet isn’t included here, which given it’s clearly, and somewhat awkwardly, a fix-up is slightly odd. Contractual rights issues?

Anyway, she (T)’s a barbarian-swordswoman-priest, she (K)’s a journeywoman-sorceress with a magic sword, they have adventures and save women. As secondary characters there’s Warrl, a large, intelligent, wolf/lion mix who bonds with Tarma, and Need, Kethry’s sword, inscribed with a mission statement it takes literally: Woman’s Need calls me, as Woman’s Need made me, Her Need must I answer, as my maker bade me; and which weaves in and out of most of the post-Arrows Valdemar stories through the Mage Storms trilogy.

The main problem with Oathbound is that there is no in-novel arc. There is a longer arc, Tarma is the sole survivor of her clan and needs to re-establish it, but to take on blood-feud against the raiders who killed them, she swore an oath to the goddess and is now neuter (Lackey’s term, it’s more than simple celibacy, but there’s no indication of anything physical, it’s more she’s completely psychologically ace). Kethry, on the other hand, explicitly enjoys male company, and has sworn to be the means of re-establishing the clan through her children. They get some good advice early on, from a couple of male mercenaries who sketch out a plan for how to go about getting from here to there – establish a reputation as a pair, join a mercenary company as officers, build a reputation there, use that reputation to found a school of arms and magic, which will give them the stability to raise kids. Oathbound covers the first part of that, but the episodes stand completely independent of each other.

As short stories they’re fine, but this isn’t a novel and can’t really be read as such. There is a fairly formulaic pattern to the episodes, Need summons them to some woman in need and they’re dropped into the problem completely in the dark, even if they range from demon slaying to locked-room mysteries. Some are based on filk songs Lackey had written (included as an appendix), and she injects an annoying bard, Leslac into the story to give them an in-universe existence. Unfortunately I found the whole conceit annoying, not just the bard.

One story (Threes) I had a real problem with. T and K capture a bandit chief they know has been responsible for the rape and murder of several young women (as well as a lot more general murder and banditry), and their punishment is for Kethry to cast an illusion transforming his appearance into that of a beautiful woman, and release him back to his men to be raped in his turn.   I’m really not comfortable with rape as a punishment. Having survived that, he reappears in a later story, only to be transformed into a woman by a demon, which seems to be following rape as punishment with enforced sex-change as punishment. Definitely not comfortable with this.

One thing that doesn’t entirely come out in the telling, but is made clear in later canon, is just how young Tarma and Kethry are at the opening of Oathbound. Tarma is eighteen in the first story, Kethry is about the same age. Okay, they’ve both grown up expecting to be independent adults at that age, Tarma as a nomad, Kethry in a school of magic which takes journeywoman literally, but they feel like older, wiser characters right from the start. On the other hand, there is a real feel of them becoming gradually more experienced.

I mostly like the stories, with the noted exceptions, but Oathbound doesn’t work as a novel, so definitely approach it as a themed collection.

Oathbreakers

Time has passed, and Tarma and Kethry are now experienced officers in Idra’s Sunhawks, a mercenary company run by Captain, formerly Princess, Idra. We get an opening mercenary campaign, but then Idra gets summoned home to cast her vote on which of her brothers inherits the crown of Rethwellan, and she doesn’t come back. Tarma and Kethry are sent to investigate, using Tarma’s nomad connections to appear as a pair of horse dealers with a string of horses fit for a king.

Invited into the palace, courtesy of Kethry’s minor title, they find Idra voted for the wrong brother, and King Raschar is running the kind of court in which disagreeing with him is bad for your continued health. They make contact with the head dissident, Jadrek the archivist, but end up running off in search of Idra and/or her brother.

Eventually they find Stefansen, the supposed worthless rake, hiding over the border in Valdemar with his wife and child, and another magic sword (which they just happened to find along the way) confirms him as the rightful king. So it’s time to organise a revolution. By the end of the story they’re in the perfect  position to found their magic school.

Despite some overly convenient coincidences, Oathbreakers is a much better novel, starting with it actually being a novel, with a proper arc. It probably also reflects Lackey maturing as a writer and all the caveats I had with Oathbound don’t really apply to Oathbreakers. The one thing I wasn’t entirely comfortable with was the final solution to the Leslac problem – enforced marriage to a slightly dotty duchess.

Oathblood

With Oathblood we’re back to Oathbound territory, short stories about Tarma and Kethry as wandering adventurers. This is all the T and K stories that didn’t go into Oathbound, in some cases because they hadn’t been written at the time, but annoyingly quite a large proportion of the book is two stories that did get into Oathbound, and the claim that was ‘in slightly different format’ doesn’t really hold up AFAICS. There might be some very minor edits, but they might as well have been dropped in without change.

Incidentally, I thought this was new to me, but either I read this in dead tree format, or I managed to come across every story in it as they were published. Probably I have a copy stuffed somewhere I didn’t find when looking for them.

Of the stories not repeated, we get the T and K origin story missing from Oathbound, which is really a story of two halves: really rather good on Tarma’s origins, but then Kethry is conveniently dropped in for the final confrontation, which is much more up and down. The final fight really didn’t work for me. The two duplicate stories obviously occur during the wandering mercenary phase, as do a couple more. The other three are set during the school/refounding the clan phase that we didn’t see in Oathbound/ Oathbreakers. The earliest is set with the clans, and is okay, but for a somewhat awkward attempt to show what seems to be someone who is non-binary. A story set at the school is much better, and makes me wish Lackey had actually written a whole novel set there, while the final story takes Tarma up to Valdemar to do the horse-whisperer thing on a troubled stud farm, and is really too slight to end on. It’s well enough written, but is essentially a gimmick story.

Overall I’m glad I re-read them, but the first and third volumes are more problematical than the middle volume. It might have been better to integrate parts of Oathblood into Oathbound for the Kindle edition and remove the duplications, leaving the three later stories as a coda to the whole.

*I don’t remember the Vanyel trilogy being quite so awkward with homosexuality – and as an ‘80s big-name author trilogy with a gay protagonist it must have been quite a novel (ahem)  concept at the time - but it’s a long time since I re-read it. I guess that’s something I’ll have to correct this year.

Comments

[vass]

(Lackey’s term, it’s more than simple celibacy, but there’s no indication of anything physical, it’s more she’s completely psychologically ace)

My haven't-reread-in-years memory is that in addition to the asexuality-by-divine-mandate there were some hormonal effects too -- she was flatter than before and completely infertile. Is that incorrect?

I think Lackey might have been riffing on [a Shin'a'in Goddess version of] the emasca surgery ("illegal neutering operation" quote unquote) that some characters in Bradley's Darkover books had. Which, I realise now but didn't when I read those books, itself might be Bradley's view of trans men. There was a character who'd become emasca before she'd learned about the Renunciates and regretted it after she found them, and if she'd had the support of feminist sisterhood and lesbianism and consciousness-raising she wouldn't have had to do such a "terrible" thing as "mutilate" her body like that.

Lackey's first sale was in Bradley's Sword and Sorceress series, and the Heraldic Gifts are very similar to Bradley's laran.

The earliest is set with the clans, and is okay, but for a somewhat awkward attempt to show what seems to be someone who is non-binary.

I don't remember that character, but if it was only slightly awkward, that's better than I've seen from Lackey in other books. Firesong, a flamboyantly femme gay man who is never shown as identifying as any gender other than male, is able to wield Need (who by this time has woken up and is able to communicate by Mindspeech, but still only accepts women as bearers) because "his masculine and feminine sides are perfectly balanced." And then there's that trans character in the Diane Tregarde short story, a woman who was gatekept out of medical transition because she was "insane" and became an evil mage instead and the book persistently regards her as a not a woman but a delusional man because the doctors turned her down. :(

One story (Threes) I had a real problem with.

Yeah, that was fucked up. And gross. And even worse when he's taunted for "liking" being raped after his forced feminisation. And then the demon gives Tarma a makeover too. Mercedes Lackey has Issues.

while the final story takes Tarma up to Valdemar to do the horse-whisperer thing on a troubled stud farm

Was it Forst Reach (Vanyel's family's lands) or am I misremembering?

[davidgillon]

Hormonal is definitely in the frame, there's a story where everything is going wrong due to a cursed bad-luck charm, and Kethry gets menstrual cramps, but Tarma gets a cold. OTOH she's described as thin as a blade in her initial description in the introductory story, before the bandit attack and before she becomes swordsworn. (Her boyfriend 'jokes' he doesn't know whether he's sleeping with her or her sword - why he isn't treated to the flat of it across the back of his head I'm not sure)

I've not read the Darkover stuff, so can't really comment on the similarities to emasca, but she was clearly close to Bradley, and that initial sale was this story...

Firesong, a flamboyantly femme gay man who is never shown as identifying as any gender other than male, is able to wield Need ... because "his masculine and feminine sides are perfectly balanced."

She uses exactly the same line for the Tayledras mage in this story, with the strong suggestion Need can't decide on his sex, so errs on the side of female-sort-it-out-later. I'd forgotten Firesong wields Need until you reminded me, and how much I loathe how that pairing ends in disability/disfiguration-as-punishment may explain why I didn't catch the gender aspects. It isn't expressly stated this Tayledras is gay, but he did have a Shin'a'in shaman as a friend, which may have been an attempt to imply it. Without that reminder of Firesong I decided it was a lousy attempt to describe someone non-binary, but now you've pointed out the similarity it does sound like she has a very odd view of gay men, and that the mage in this story may have been proto-Firesong (especially as he also looks after a flock of firebirds). I don't think it is Firesong, as it's implied this mage may be much older than he looks, and Firesong doesn't have the experience/emotional maturity to be that old plus another 50 years or so.

I'm not sure if I've read the Tregarde short story, I've read the novels. It's so long since I read them I may not have fully comprehended what was going on - my understanding of trans issues is a lot more recent.

And the final story is Spring Plowing at Forst Reach, so quite definitely the Ashkevron family stud farm.

[sovay]

Vows and Honor collects the Tarma and Kethry stories with which Lackey first broke through into professional publishing

I had an idiosyncratic and completely unfair reaction to these stories: a close friend of mine was reading Lackey in elementary school and described the Tarma and Kethry stories (as well as the novel about Kerowyn) in such a way that they sounded fascinating to me, which combined with the Jody Lee cover art to make me really interested; they sounded haunting and dangerous and morally ambiguous and then I tried reading the first volume and whatever my friend was getting out of them, I couldn't find it, and I went away. I re-encountered a bunch of the stories when I was collecting Sword and Sorceress for Dorothy J. Heydt's Cynthia stories in college and they felt like something I had missed the window on, but I think that was primarily my experience of Mercedes Lackey. I have good memories of Arrows of the Queen, but am deeply concerned about the books holding up. [edit] I had imprinted deeply on McCaffrey's Dragonriders also in elementary school, however, so it may be that the telepathic companion animal niche in my brain was just full.

[davidgillon]

By The Sword, the Kerowyn novel,is actually my favourite of the lot. It still has problems: structurally it's three or four novellas from different points in Kerowyn's life; plus she's lumbered with a completely unreasonable fear of her own mindspeech gift for clumsy plot reasons, which under any reasonable interpretation of the circumstances Kethry and/or Warrl should have beaten out of her fixed. She inherited it from her grandfather, Kethry's husband, and spent several years living under the same roof as both Kethry and Warrl. Warrl does give her basic training, enough to keep her out of his dreams, but doesn't fix the issue, and Kethry seems almost uninterested. It's only Tarma who really trains her, and that's like leaving her with half her skillset not just untrained, but as a major chink in her armour

But because Tarma did train her to be a mercenary officer, and because she spent her career working as one, the finally-Chosen-in-spite-of-all-her-ridiculous-protests-Kerowyn hits the oh-so-noble and ridiculously unmilitary Heralds like a drill sergeant screaming at a bunch of raw recruits, and the later books become much more believable as a result.