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A review by gmvader
Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey
1.0
Mercedes Lackey has written over fifty books in the last twenty years. Having written only one, very mediocre book in ten years I can appreciate that this is a significant amount of work that she has accomplished. She has co-authored a large number of those books and has a large fan base of people who find her books charming and wonderful.
I had a slightly less grand experience. The story, in itself was good enough. What I think bothered me most was the lack of editing that went into the book. There were multiple typos on every page – sometimes entire words were missing. This could be the fault of the publisher for sloppy typesetting or any number of things and I could have overlooked them if there weren’t so many other things that could have also been fixed by a few attentive edits.
The word ‘indeed’ was used so often that it started to sound funny and there were a lot of over-written sentences that could have used a generous helping of editorial chopping. In particular was the exhaustive use of narrative exposition. Usually out of nowhere the history of a street or person who had never been mentioned before would have a three or four page background given in the middle of a conversation. Detail and exposition are tricky things. They have to be woven into stories so that the reader either doesn’t know that it’s there or doesn’t mind. Miss Lackey just pulls it out like the worst of movie narrators and throws down a boring background story. Characters thoughts are described painstakingly so that when they finally act it will make sense to the reader. Unfortunately by the time they do something the brain is so numb it’s hard to tell if anything even happened. The narrative voice is sometimes colloquial and speaking to the reader as if being spoken by a storyteller and sometimes it’s got a tight omniscient point of view in somebody’s head and other times it jumps around to characters mid paragraph.
The magic is the kind that I hate in fantasy, magic that does magical things that make the plot go where it’s supposed to and doesn’t do magical things in order to keep the plot where it’s going. There doesn’t seem to be any discernable reasoning behind why magic can and can’t do certain things – though the author tries to cover it up by supplying tidbits that hint that there is some logic behind it all. (I know, it’s magic. But even magic in a fantasy world has to have logic behind it.)
This book felt to me a lot like Terry Brooks does. It fills me with an intense apathy. I didn’t care what happened. The bad guy did horrible things that didn’t really even sound all that horrible. The good guys get attacked and fight bad guys and it never feels like there is any danger.
The characters are well imagined. I never got any of them confused. Miss Lackey seems to be well read on history and literature of the time period in which the book is set.
In all I would suggest you only read this book if you are a Lackey lackey or a Terry Brooks fan. If you are not a fan of her books, certainly don’t start with this one.
I had a slightly less grand experience. The story, in itself was good enough. What I think bothered me most was the lack of editing that went into the book. There were multiple typos on every page – sometimes entire words were missing. This could be the fault of the publisher for sloppy typesetting or any number of things and I could have overlooked them if there weren’t so many other things that could have also been fixed by a few attentive edits.
The word ‘indeed’ was used so often that it started to sound funny and there were a lot of over-written sentences that could have used a generous helping of editorial chopping. In particular was the exhaustive use of narrative exposition. Usually out of nowhere the history of a street or person who had never been mentioned before would have a three or four page background given in the middle of a conversation. Detail and exposition are tricky things. They have to be woven into stories so that the reader either doesn’t know that it’s there or doesn’t mind. Miss Lackey just pulls it out like the worst of movie narrators and throws down a boring background story. Characters thoughts are described painstakingly so that when they finally act it will make sense to the reader. Unfortunately by the time they do something the brain is so numb it’s hard to tell if anything even happened. The narrative voice is sometimes colloquial and speaking to the reader as if being spoken by a storyteller and sometimes it’s got a tight omniscient point of view in somebody’s head and other times it jumps around to characters mid paragraph.
The magic is the kind that I hate in fantasy, magic that does magical things that make the plot go where it’s supposed to and doesn’t do magical things in order to keep the plot where it’s going. There doesn’t seem to be any discernable reasoning behind why magic can and can’t do certain things – though the author tries to cover it up by supplying tidbits that hint that there is some logic behind it all. (I know, it’s magic. But even magic in a fantasy world has to have logic behind it.)
This book felt to me a lot like Terry Brooks does. It fills me with an intense apathy. I didn’t care what happened. The bad guy did horrible things that didn’t really even sound all that horrible. The good guys get attacked and fight bad guys and it never feels like there is any danger.
The characters are well imagined. I never got any of them confused. Miss Lackey seems to be well read on history and literature of the time period in which the book is set.
In all I would suggest you only read this book if you are a Lackey lackey or a Terry Brooks fan. If you are not a fan of her books, certainly don’t start with this one.