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A review by iffer
Changes by Mercedes Lackey
1.0
As another reviewer of a different Mercedes Lackey book wrote, "Mercedes Lackey is the comfort food of fantasy." I agree with this. My problem is, that even with that designation, this most recent trilogy, The Collegium Chronicles, was extremely disappointing.
The plot was slow; there were typos in all the volumes; and all the characters spent too much time whining. The amount of plot that was covered in three volumes should have been covered in one, and the main character wasn't likeable because he was just *too* nice, even assuming that heralds of Valdemar are supposed to be duty-driven straight arrows. Maybe it wasn't that he was too nice as much as that he was boring. Mags starts off as some country bumpkin with a heart of gold, and at the end of the THIRD novel, he's still portrays himself as a nice country boy (but not a bumpkin unless it's useful to disguise himself as ignorant) and you still haven't found out anything about his parents. I guess that the message of the novels is supposed to be that his mysterious unknown past shouldn't be important because he's found a new family and he's going to forge his own destiny, but this wasn't communicated particularly well. Furthermore, no messages, themes or any characterization was conveyed particularly well. In these novels, Lackey tells, over and over again, instead of showing the audience what she presumably wants them to get. Most of the Valdemar novels that have come out after Arrows of the Queen, The Last Herald Mage, and The Mage Winds trilogies have fallen somewhat flat, but these are the nadir. Either Lackey is fresh out of ideas, or she needs more time than her publisher (wanting to milk the Valdemar cash cow) is giving her to write a well-planned story.
The plot was slow; there were typos in all the volumes; and all the characters spent too much time whining. The amount of plot that was covered in three volumes should have been covered in one, and the main character wasn't likeable because he was just *too* nice, even assuming that heralds of Valdemar are supposed to be duty-driven straight arrows. Maybe it wasn't that he was too nice as much as that he was boring. Mags starts off as some country bumpkin with a heart of gold, and at the end of the THIRD novel, he's still portrays himself as a nice country boy (but not a bumpkin unless it's useful to disguise himself as ignorant) and you still haven't found out anything about his parents. I guess that the message of the novels is supposed to be that his mysterious unknown past shouldn't be important because he's found a new family and he's going to forge his own destiny, but this wasn't communicated particularly well. Furthermore, no messages, themes or any characterization was conveyed particularly well. In these novels, Lackey tells, over and over again, instead of showing the audience what she presumably wants them to get. Most of the Valdemar novels that have come out after Arrows of the Queen, The Last Herald Mage, and The Mage Winds trilogies have fallen somewhat flat, but these are the nadir. Either Lackey is fresh out of ideas, or she needs more time than her publisher (wanting to milk the Valdemar cash cow) is giving her to write a well-planned story.