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Title: Owlsight (Valdemar: Darian's Tale, Book 2) by Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon ISBN: 0-88677-803-4 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (64 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent middle book - more than just a link between 1&3
Comment: Continues the story of Valdemar and answers some of those what happened to == questions. When writing a muti book series in the same world (this is 21st novel in Valdemar) it is too easy to fall into a same story different names. Ms. Lackey has not done so. The book is well paced, I did no find myself skipping ahead and held my interest thoughout. In fact, the book kept me up until 2 am on a work night with the "I'll read just one more chapter" and I was able to finish it by lunch the next day. Rereading it has been also been interesting. A trait true of most of Mercedes' books. This continued the story of Darien and the Hawkbrothers. Also more on the allied "people" such as king stagg Tyrsell. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in fantasy as well as any of Merry's many fans.
Rating: 2
Summary: Good but Flat
Comment: This book is well-written (what Mercedes Lackey book isn't?) and has very good detail and description. She's obviously done a great deal of research into the life of a rural herbalist, and has spent a lot of time mentally crafting the village and Vales. Unfortunately, she sacrifices plot and conflict for this, cramming the climax into a few chapters at the end, as if she suddenly realized that a deadline was approaching and she'd spent all her time describing the Vale and Keisha's work. Also, I found myself reading passages thinking that they could have been summed up in a few sentences--do we really need to know EXACTLY how Keisha decides what things to take when she moves? Most annoying, to me, was that none of the characters had any real character flaws. One of the great things about Lackey's Valdemar books is the humanness of the characters: Elspeth is impetuous and sometimes arrogant, Vanyel shuts himself off, Amberdrake won't believe that he's a leader. Unfortunately, she seems to have misplaced this knack for this series. Keisha is kind, sensible, and generous, and most of her minor "flaws" are simply the result of an untrained Gift; Darian is kind, sensible, generous, and eloquent to boot. And the Tayledras have suddenly turned into Purveyors Of All That Is Useful, rather than an isolated, forest-dwelling people with a small population who carry on a very limited trade of luxury goods for basic supplies. And Firesong, who was kind but fickle and EXTREMELY arrogant in the Winds trilogy, has not only mellowed but is in this book utterly calm and humble and seems to have lost any sense of vanity. Though I usually love Lackey's books, I was getting thoroughly sick of Darian and Keisha by the end. To sum up: this book is pretty good, but not up to Lackey's usual standard. It's fairly fun, especially if you like lots of description, but slow-moving, and understandable even to those unfamiliar with the series. Don't expect it to be on the level of the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, though, or to be a gripping adventure story.
Rating: 1
Summary: Going from bad to worse
Comment: I first picked up the Darian's Tale series because I thought that any fantasy author who takes up a great deal of shelf space in bookstores and libraries, as Mercedes Lackey always does, must be at least a competent writer. Of course, you would think that after my unfortunate encounters with Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind I would have learned my lesson. Anyway, "Owlflight" was mediocre, but "Owlsight" is much, much worse. There's much discussion among fans of the genre about the fact that many of the most popular authors can't seem to find a decent editor. "Owlsight" is an excellent showcase of this trend. The book is rife with errors in grammar and punctuation. There are awkward sentences ("There just wasn't enough readily available magic energy available to do such a task.") and inapt metaphors ("She felt as if her nerves had been rubbed raw and somebody was pouring saltwater on them.") The writing feels completely shoddy and hasty, especially when we get descriptions of people's clothes that go on for pages and sound more gaudy and tasteless than anything that the most incompetent fashion designer could come up with, or when we have to endure speeches about various trite morals, such "war is bad" and "judging people is bad". Normally editors are supposed to flag down all of this. When authors grow powerful enough to muscle past the editorial process, they risk embarrassing themselves, which is certainly what happened to Lackey and Dixon in "Owlsight".
If we look past the lousy writing, what do we find? Not much. I complained that the plot of "Owlflight" was slow. In this book, it's almost nonexistent. The first three-hundred pages are spent entirely on introducing the two main characters and showing us many, many, many scenes of them chatting with friends, eating, and otherwise going through the motions of an ordinary day. We have Darian, who's still hanging out with the Hawkbrothers and endlessly ruminating about unworthy and inferior he is. And then we have the healer Keisha, who is hanging out in Errold's Grove and endlessly ruminating about how unworthy and inferior she is. The new army of barbarians doesn't show up until almost the end of the book, and the authors' method for dealing with them sounds forced and unrealistic. After four-hundred-and-fifty pages, "Owlsight" limps to a close without giving us a proper climactic showdown, or even a single action scene. At no point do we ever get a decent portrait of any character. You would think that right before a showdown with a large and possibly dangerous army, these teenagers would be at least a little bit nervous, right. But in "Owlsight", they act like it's a walk in the park.
I don't think that I'll even bother reading the final volume of this syrupy series. After all, don't we all know how it's going to end? Darian and Keisha will fall madly in love, but it will somehow take them several hundred pages to express their feeling for each other. Meanwhile, a new bunch of bad guys will show up from somewhere, but our heroes will once again find a clever way to deal with them, and all will be right with the world. Yawn. I have better things to do with my time than sitting around reading predictable claptrap like this.
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Title: Storm Breaking (The Mage Storms, Book 3) by Mercedes Lackey ISBN: 0886777550 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: October, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Storm Rising by Mercedes Lackey ISBN: 0886777127 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The White Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon ISBN: 0886776821 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey ISBN: 0886779898 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The Silver Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon ISBN: 0886776856 Publisher: DAW Books Pub. Date: March, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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