Scan barcode
A review by leons1701
Redoubt by Mercedes Lackey
3.0
And so continues the Collegium Chronicles. Anyone who's been following this series knows what to expect by now, a lot of filler about Mags day to day life, a Kirball game or two and some undercover work in Haven. And if it's not earthshaking or even character developing for the most part, it's at least competently written and not too boring. Mind you, when stuff finally started happening about two thirds of the way through the book, it was past time. A few bits of revelation about Mags past complete the formula.
This particular series is a tough one to rate in many ways, I'm almost tempted to just give it two stars and have done with it, but it's just good enough to avoid that fate. A big part of the problem with this series is that it lives in the shadows of other, better works. Mags is really just a reworking of one of Lackey's more popular characters, Skif of "To Take a Thief" and most of the Talia/Elspeth series. Kirball is just a sillier, more Quidditch version of Hurlee. And the whole thing lives in the shadow of the book it should have been.
We're told this is the beginning of the Collegium, but other than a nod or two in the first book, you'd never know that. There's no sense of the beginning of things, of new traditions being established, of rules being laid down, of experimentation to discover what works and what doesn't. That's what I expected when the series was announced, what we got was just another Heralds in Training series that feels exactly no different from any other. This failure is easily the most grating thing about the series to me, why bother setting a series at the establishment of the Collegium if you intend to make zero use of that setting. Its every bit as annoying as the X-Men going to New Orleans and spending the entire time there in an underground cavern, making exactly the same story you'd get if they'd stayed in New York and gone to the Morlock tunnels. It was lousy storytelling there, and it's lousy writing here and Lackey really ought to know better.
This particular series is a tough one to rate in many ways, I'm almost tempted to just give it two stars and have done with it, but it's just good enough to avoid that fate. A big part of the problem with this series is that it lives in the shadows of other, better works. Mags is really just a reworking of one of Lackey's more popular characters, Skif of "To Take a Thief" and most of the Talia/Elspeth series. Kirball is just a sillier, more Quidditch version of Hurlee. And the whole thing lives in the shadow of the book it should have been.
We're told this is the beginning of the Collegium, but other than a nod or two in the first book, you'd never know that. There's no sense of the beginning of things, of new traditions being established, of rules being laid down, of experimentation to discover what works and what doesn't. That's what I expected when the series was announced, what we got was just another Heralds in Training series that feels exactly no different from any other. This failure is easily the most grating thing about the series to me, why bother setting a series at the establishment of the Collegium if you intend to make zero use of that setting. Its every bit as annoying as the X-Men going to New Orleans and spending the entire time there in an underground cavern, making exactly the same story you'd get if they'd stayed in New York and gone to the Morlock tunnels. It was lousy storytelling there, and it's lousy writing here and Lackey really ought to know better.