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A review by meribiaa
The White Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon
3.0
This one is less of a reread for me. I attempted to read The White Gryphon directly after reading The Black Gryphon years ago but put it down at the 25% mark. I ran into the same issue that I’d had with The Black Gryphon—expectations of a certain story and timeframe were thwarted by the reality of the book.
The Black Gryphon ends with a bang, and the main characters are forced out of their homeland and into the unknown, with a magical cataclysm rocking the foundations of the universe and making magic go wild and unstable. It sounds like an exciting place to pick up, doesn’t it? Where will the cast go? What dangers will they face? How will this magic-dependant society make do? How long will it take them to get out of the blast zone? These were the questions that I was left with.
The White Gryphon helpfully summarizes the answers, because it takes place a full 10 years later!
I think it’s fair to say that I was shocked and disappointed when I jumped into the book and discovered that we’d skipped through what I considered “the good stuff”. Not only that, but the focus of the story very quickly moves away from the new settlement of White Gryphon to an unknown place and culture.
So, 25% in, disappointed, disillusioned, I gave up. Then, several years later, I tried again.
This time I allowed the book to be what it was and enjoyed it more for that. I was shocked to find that it was a murder mystery, which veers wildly away from the war story that we got in The Black Gryphon. The Mage Wars as a whole defies definition or expectations at every turn.
The new characters that we got—Makke, Shalaman, Leyeut, Kanshin, Noyoki, and Hadanelith—were varied and, for the most part, interesting. Some of them I really liked, and one of them, I was sure had a secret that I had guessed early (I was wrong!). There’s a lot of different POVs in this installment, and I think the book benefits from them. It feels like we see and experience more as these different people than we did in The Black Gryphon.
Some of the conflict feels a bit contrived—especially the plot line that has a time crunch—but I was still curious enough about the specifics to stick with it.
It felt unique in a Lackey book to have such a variety of villains, and I really enjoyed the time spent in Kanshin’s POV! I think Lackey would benefit from having more villains like him, and less like Hadanelith.
While the books has its highs and lows, and while it’s worthwhile to read for a diehard Lackey fan looking to appreciate the worldbuilding of Velgarth, this is not a book I’ll be rereading very frequently or soon.
The Black Gryphon ends with a bang, and the main characters are forced out of their homeland and into the unknown, with a magical cataclysm rocking the foundations of the universe and making magic go wild and unstable. It sounds like an exciting place to pick up, doesn’t it? Where will the cast go? What dangers will they face? How will this magic-dependant society make do? How long will it take them to get out of the blast zone? These were the questions that I was left with.
The White Gryphon helpfully summarizes the answers, because it takes place a full 10 years later!
I think it’s fair to say that I was shocked and disappointed when I jumped into the book and discovered that we’d skipped through what I considered “the good stuff”. Not only that, but the focus of the story very quickly moves away from the new settlement of White Gryphon to an unknown place and culture.
So, 25% in, disappointed, disillusioned, I gave up. Then, several years later, I tried again.
This time I allowed the book to be what it was and enjoyed it more for that. I was shocked to find that it was a murder mystery, which veers wildly away from the war story that we got in The Black Gryphon. The Mage Wars as a whole defies definition or expectations at every turn.
The new characters that we got—Makke, Shalaman, Leyeut, Kanshin, Noyoki, and Hadanelith—were varied and, for the most part, interesting. Some of them I really liked, and one of them, I was sure had a secret that I had guessed early (I was wrong!). There’s a lot of different POVs in this installment, and I think the book benefits from them. It feels like we see and experience more as these different people than we did in The Black Gryphon.
Some of the conflict feels a bit contrived—especially the plot line that has a time crunch—but I was still curious enough about the specifics to stick with it.
It felt unique in a Lackey book to have such a variety of villains, and I really enjoyed the time spent in Kanshin’s POV! I think Lackey would benefit from having more villains like him, and less like Hadanelith.
While the books has its highs and lows, and while it’s worthwhile to read for a diehard Lackey fan looking to appreciate the worldbuilding of Velgarth, this is not a book I’ll be rereading very frequently or soon.