The Phoenix Unchained, by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory

Today I'm looking at the first book in a series co-written by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. Now, I've sort of talked about Mercedes Lackey before on here, and her novel Gwenhwyfar is by and far is one of my favorite books of all time and hands down the best reinterpretation of Arthurian legend I've ever encountered. I've also encountered Lackey in the Bolo series and a few of her other books so I was willing to give this one a try to see if it was any good. I don't think I've read anything by James Mallory before so this was a good opportunity to look at more stuff.

As much as I hate to say it, this book is pretty paint-by-the-numbers fantasy fare. The book begins with two adolescent boys who are on the cusp of manhood. Harrier is the youngest son of the harbor master in the great port city of Armethalieh and destined to take over the duties of harbor master himself one day. Tiercel meanwhile is the eldest son of a minor noble family, heading for the university and a probably uneventful career in Aremthalieh's civil service. However a book that Harrier gets for his naming day leads to Tiercel attempting ancient High Magic, a practice that has been extinct for a thousand years since the Flowering that ended the war with the Endarkened Ones. It's soon revealed that Tiercel has the ability to use the High Magic and must leave his home behind to find someone to teach him how to use his abilities before they end up killing him.

Basically this book feels a lot like most epic fantasy quests which have been churned out ever since Lord of the Rings first hit shelves. Now, this isn't to say that epic fantasy quests are bad, there's a lot to be said for them and a lot that can be done with them. But it is kind of frustrating when they all seem to come out the same in the end. Obviously this book isn't exactly the same as Lord of the Rings but it fits pretty heavily into the fantasy quest mold. There's an epic battle brewing between good and evil, the latest in a conflict that's been going for thousands of years, and we have some young heroes who have to leave home and go fight evil, gaining new powers and abilities on the way. They expect the journey will be fairly short and uneventful, but they soon end up on a larger quest that will take them further away from home than they ever expected. There's even a point where they get rescued by a ranger-type character, actually a member of the Forest Watch, who's a centaur. Now, I did like Samara and I thought the idea of including centaurs was kind of neat because you don't usually see those in fantasy.

Overall I think this book was okay, but as I said I felt it fell a little too easily into the standard epic fantasy genre. It's okay and I can't point to anything specific that's wrong with the book, but there's nothing about the book that makes it stand out in any particular way. The arrival of a unicorn at the end of this book made the future potential kind of interesting but the first book leaves a lot to be desired.

- Kalpar

Hunter, by Mercedes Lackey

Today I'm looking at the first book in a new series by Mercedes Lackey, Hunter. I have talked about Lackey a few times on the blog before, specifically her book Gwenhwyfar, which I consider to be hands-down the best Arthurian retelling I've ever read. Lackey also wrote several stories for the Bolo series and I thought they were pretty good as well, so I was eager to try something else from this author from my public library's audio book collection.

Hunter is set in the distant future, some two hundred and fifty years after an event known as the Diseray when the boundaries between our world and the Otherworld were broken and all the monsters of folklore managed to come back and invade our world. Things were falling apart all over but fortunately humans had a few things going for them. First, the military was able to scavenge equipment and utilize modern weaponry to take on some of the worst monsters, as well as develop barriers that Otherworld monsters couldn't cross. Second, magic also entered the world and about one to two percent of the population developed magical talents which they could use to fight the monsters. Most important of all, a portion of those with magical abilities became Hunters, forming a psychic bond with Otherworld creatures known as Hounds. With a pack of Hounds to aid them, Hunters are the greatest weapon humans have in their fight for survival.

The book focuses on Joyeaux Charmand, a Hunter who grows up in mountain villages near a monastery in the Rocky Mountains. Life seems to be going okay until her uncle, head of the police, tells her she needs to report to the capital city of Apex, to join the teams of Hunters located there. When Joy arrives she discovers the Hunters are actually a form of entertainment for the civilian population of Apex, with each Hunter getting their own video streaming channel, and the most popular Hunters with the most fans get the best benefits. Joy also very quickly gets told everything is not as it appears in Apex and she may be used as a hostage against her uncle in a mysterious shadow political struggle.

As much as I hate to make the comparison, this book reminded me a lot of The Hunger Games, and not necessarily in a good way. I think partly this was because Joy and the other Hunters were a form of entertainment for the civilian population. They may be competing with each other indirectly, but they're still involved in fighting for people's entertainment and to distract the civilian population from how things have actually been getting worse in Apex and there are more monsters than ever. Plus there's the whole dystopian nature of Apex, with people apparently being jailed for sedition and a large gap between the haves and have-nots. There are elements where it definitely feels like this book is trying to cash in on the dystopian theme that's been running around fiction, especially young adult fiction, for quite some time now.

The biggest problem is I don't feel like it's done terribly well. Lackey doesn't do a great job in this book of showing us how everything is a dystopia. We're told about people being jailed for sedition, treason, homelessness, and other crimes, but we never really see police rounding people up or the inside of one of the prisons or anything like that. The Hunters patrol the slums for monsters, but they don't seem to interact with the poor segments of the population all that much, spending all their free time in the pleasant, gilded center of Apex. That at least is where Hunger Games shone, in my opinion, was by showing the dystopian nature of the government and its pervasiveness. Here it just doesn't feel quite the same.

Joy also kind of suffers from designated protagonist syndrome in this book. She has seven Hounds, meaning she has more hounds than almost everyone else, as well as being super-strong magically speaking. Before she even gets to Apex she faces down a magician of the Folk (basically fairies) and manages to get him to leave an entire train alone. I didn't track exactly how long the events of the book took, but it definitely felt like the entire book took less than a month in story time and that feels like far, far too short a time for everything that goes on. I will grant you that Joy is an experienced Hunter with several years of fighting monsters under her belt, but even with that taken into consideration it feels far, far too generous. And as a result the book just feels rushed, in my opinion.

So I'd say this book is okay, but I wouldn't say it's great. There are some good ideas in here and Lackey is a very good writer, but it feels like it's borrowing far too much from the current trend of dystopian sci-fi/fantasy novels. Obviously those books are popular because people are really digging that sort of thing right now, but after a while I do feel like it becomes more of the same thing. If this seems interesting to you, I'd say check it out, but don't expect too many great or new things to come from this book.

- Kalpar

Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit, by Mercedes Lackey

Today I'm taking a look at another Mercedes Lackey book, in this case Gwenhwyfar: The White Spirit, which is Lackey's own take on the Arthurian mythos and a sort of reinterpretation as well. When you get something as old as the legends surrounding Arthur there are dozens, if not hundreds of stories which have been edited, altered, censored, expanded, or otherwise changed over the centuries. During her research into Arthurian legend, Lackey came across an interesting and old idea that Arthur actually had three queens, all of whom were named Guinevere, or Gwenhywfar for a more Welsh version. (When it comes to some characters there seems to be a different spelling for each version.) On top of that, one of the Gwenhwyfars also had a sister named Gwenhwyfach, to make it only more confusing. Lackey thought that having three Gwenhwyfars would explain far more about all the shenanigans that Arthur's queen supposedly got into. And also how she could have had two sons or no sons at the same time.

Now, I haven't talked about it much on this blog, aside from that one time I reviewed Le Morte d'Arthur way, way back. But I'm like, a huge sucker for Arthurian legend. I have vivid memories of checking out every book I could find about Arthur from the library, as well as anything I could find about knights, castles, and medieval history in general. So when I was looking through the library and found a reinterpretation of Arthurian myth from an author who I've enjoyed before, I absolutely had to pick it up. And I had an absolute blast listening to this book. It was kind of confusing in the beginning as I was getting myself oriented within the framework of the story, but once the story got its feet under it it just goes and doesn't stop until the very end. And if you're a fan of Arthurian myth as much as I am, you're going to enjoy this story immensely.

Plot-wise the book follows the third and youngest Gwenhwyfar, who is the third of four daughters of one of King Arthur's sub-kings and begins following the path of the warrior in a very Boudica-esque fashion. The story also follows her perspective entirely and never shifts out, which I was kind of annoyed with at the beginning because it's hard to see how Gwen's life and warrior training tie into the larger story which you sense is going on ''out there'' somewhere. Which, as I said, makes the book kind of slow to start. But as the book progresses, I actually started liking the story more and more. There are a lot of things that happen that are obliquely referenced to or not fully explained, or you see snippets of what's going on. But if you're a fan of Arthurian legend and already know the story then you can fill in the details pretty easily. Eventually I came to actually enjoy the limited viewpoint since we were following just Gwen around. Largely because I knew things she didn't and could put things together because I knew the mythos so it became a sort of puzzle for me to put together. By the end, I actually found myself hoping that maybe the characters might be able to avoid the disaster at the very end of the book, with Arthur dying, Camelot falling, and Britain falling into chaos, which was pretty exciting for me.

Lackey also attempts to do a more ''historical'' interpretation of Arthur, you know, aside from all the magic floating around which I'm willing to give her a pass on. Of course, the fact that I'm the absolute worst person to look at any attempt to create a more ''historical'' Arthur came to the fore. I'm the guy who will quibble over whether or not the Romano-British, which is what the characters are supposed to be, would have used stirrups or not. Or even the use of the term castle. I get that picky. But for the most part I was able to put that aside and was able to enjoy the story. There are plenty of things that Lackey does that makes the story feel right to me. It all just really works and make the universe feel real.

Overall, I really loved this book. As I said, I've been a fan of the Arthurian mythos since forever so this book was an easy sell for me. There are some issues I had. The writing doesn't feel quite right in some places, and the book takes a while to get started, but it eventually builds up steam and then there's no stopping it. For a new interpretation of an old classic, with incorporation of elements both old and new, Gwenhwyfar is definitely worth it.

- Kalpar