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Jul. 8th, 2020 05:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressI'm rereading a bunch of the old Mercedes Lackey books, in rough chronological order, for the first time since...college probably? Spoilers below the cut for: Vows and Honor (Tarma and Kethry), By the Sword (Kerowyn, my Kero), Arrows trilogy (Talia), and Mage Winds (Elspeth).
Also this entry is probably gonna get pretty weird, considering I spent the entire time writing it crying, but not like the bad way, just like the "emotions are a lot, especially now".
Like I said, it's been probably since college since the last time I read this many of Lackey's books. I think it was right after Obama got elected the first time, actually, I was buzzing all night and so reread the whole of By the Sword and then just jumped through huge heaps of the series.
It is not a secret that, for all the flaws within the stories and the person, Mercedes Lackey has been an incredibly strong influence on my life. I have wanted to be a Herald since I was 11 or 12 years old, I don't think there is anything that will stop my yearning, somewhere deep, for a white horse and a chance to do the right thing.
(The one chance I have had to meet Myste, in person, went hilariously poorly. I gaped, I stammered out a request for an autograph, and that her books were important to me, then I burst into tears and fled. Mom actually went by her table later and apologized for me. This was not when I was a child, this was when I was in my late twenties, was well after I'd figured out how to deal with s00j and thought therefore I could speak to any goddess who'd put their words1 on my heart. I was wrong.)
Despite all that, I don't actually read her books *that* often. There are _huge_ swaths of Valdemar that I simply never read --I think I read the first of Abrich's two books and nothing since. And with three exceptions, I haven't reread most of her stuff in like a decade. (Vanyel I will never reread again2).
Those three exceptions though...By the Sword, Oathbreakers, Silver Gryphon. I probably read each of those at least once every eighteen months, and have since I first found them. I own at least two copies of By the Sword, because the main one has the cover totally destroyed at this point. I think at one point I owned three copies of Oathbreakers! I love these three books like little else.
But it's time for a reread of more than just those, apparently, and that has been very interesting to me. Most interesting of all, to find what things are just so important as to lance through and _hit_. What makes you cry, little childe? Not a damned thing in By the Sword or Oathbreakers anymore, I know those stories forwards and sideways, the happy and the sad.
But I finished rereading Oathbreakers and picked up Talia for the first time in ages. A bit shocked to find I don't _really_ care for large swaths of Arrow's Flight and Arrow's Fall. Kris bores me, to be frank, and his plotlines felt dull and contrived. I am not touched when he passes, and Talia's torture is obviously horrific, but among other things, I know there is an eventual happily ever after I can look towards.
But Arrows of the Queen...gods. It caught me, repeatedly. Caught me in, as the kids would say, "the feels" and gave me the space and impetus to sob in catharsis3. Multiple moments, multiple unexpected places, just...look, I don't hold a love for Talia as deep as I do for Kero, and I never will, but go back and read what I said about how badly I want a Companion. Arrows of the Queen is the book that starts it all off, that there are magnificent heroes, who ride magnificent fairytale beings, and you can't buy yourself into their ranks you just have to be good, be so good that you will give all that you can to others, that you will make the world a better place with all that you do.
It's not the slightest bit healthy, it's never been healthy (and I love the hints that Talia sees about how unhealthy that suicidal sacrifice can be) and maybe the thing that hurts most is not that it's an unhealthy way for me to live, but that, because I have never been Chosen, perhaps that means I am not good enough to be a Herald.
(Unless you have blue eyes that can see into my soul, I advise you not argue with that idea one way or another.)
So yeah. Talia gets Chosen from nothing and gets to live the dream, and so what if it means a lot of hard work and pain and sacrifice and suffering. I have already given that erosion of boundaries, when I was younger and more foolish and thought that to soothe someone else's flame was worth the smothering of your own. Let me give it again, if it means I can heal the world.
So I finished Talia, and I reread By the Sword, which was as always excellent but doesn't make me cry. The older I get, the more I love Kerowyn --she's not necessarily someone to live up to, but there's strength in that severity, and training, and poise. Then hiatus for a few weeks, and finally I picked up the first Mage Winds book.
As vaguely recalled, Elspeth is mostly always great, Darkwind tends to be boring, and I will read every word of Nyara or Need ten times over. About two thirds of the book I recognized I was well and fully hooked, I finished the first at three last night and am most of the way through the second now.
And here's the thing that shook me solid, that made me tear up with...contentment and love and mischief and joy. Book two of the trilogy, page 446: One set of ice-blue eyes over a black veil caught her attention; one of those eyes winked, slowly, and deliberately. :Be at peace, little sister-in-power, student of my student.:
Because I _love_ Kero, I adore her, but she keeps showing up and being great and intimidating and take-charge and badass. She's woven into these books, not like her own, but as a magnificent supporting character.
Meanwhile, Tarma is never named again.
We don't know what happens to her, after the first third of By the Sword, tossing her grandchild out into the world. Her and Kethry are barely alluded to, their adventures are long since done. An occasional reference of "my teacher" but nothing current, nothing to make it clear they still exist...and by all rights, it's long past the time when they should. They are as old as Selaney's grandparents, and Selaney herself is old enough to have a fully adult daughter. It is...not a stretch that they have since died, hopefully peaceful, well.
And getting to see her again, getting to Know that she is at home with her goddess, full leshy'a Kal'endral...it is good to my heart. If I recall correct, she returns for a bit in the mage storms (which I am genuinely looking forward to reread, they have some of my favourite characters) and I look forward to that too, but there is just...hope, here. I think that is the thing that hits me square in the Self, that knowing that there was a final happily ever after of sorts means that maybe there is _hope_ for this horrific fucked up world.
This entry was a lot. I'm maybe sorry for that, but mostly not. We latch, when we are young, and if we are lucky we latch onto things that tell us that there is hope, and that the greatest goal is to help others.
Wind beneath your wings.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Consider: I have said before that my veins flow with ink, alluded to the importance of spilling that ink onto pages as a way of finding myself and learning my sanity. But if ink is flowing out, musn't ink also be flowing in? There are words that I choose to reabsorb, over and over, because sometimes I need to find something stable to keep me here and well.
2: Yeah, the first time I read Van was before I was raped, and it sucked and was Very Sad --he may have been the first fictional character I ever seriously cried for. The second time I read that trilogy was roundabouts college with everything else, the same time period in which I was realizing what had been done to me. I do not care for unhappily ever after, I want my escapism exactly that and have known this of myself for a long time. It is dramatic (and probably untrue) to say I will _never_ again touch the last Herald Mage, but I will have to be well prepared for exactly what it is.
3: I figure I, and probably damn near everyone else in America, is in a mild state of shock right now. Things are so obscenely painfully bad that to think about them and confront them is to break with the horror of just how bad _everything_ is. So we put ourselves in shock, make acerbic jokes, and hope and pray to any gods possible that maybe somehow this will work out okay in the end and only a few hundred thousand of us will die and the children will be let out of their cages and we can all live and love our lives in community and safety instead of poverty and neglect. I don't need to remind anyone that things are _really_ bad right now, but maybe I should remind you that it's okay to find impetus to cry, to cry hard, and then to drink some water and come back to the fight.
Also this entry is probably gonna get pretty weird, considering I spent the entire time writing it crying, but not like the bad way, just like the "emotions are a lot, especially now".
Like I said, it's been probably since college since the last time I read this many of Lackey's books. I think it was right after Obama got elected the first time, actually, I was buzzing all night and so reread the whole of By the Sword and then just jumped through huge heaps of the series.
It is not a secret that, for all the flaws within the stories and the person, Mercedes Lackey has been an incredibly strong influence on my life. I have wanted to be a Herald since I was 11 or 12 years old, I don't think there is anything that will stop my yearning, somewhere deep, for a white horse and a chance to do the right thing.
(The one chance I have had to meet Myste, in person, went hilariously poorly. I gaped, I stammered out a request for an autograph, and that her books were important to me, then I burst into tears and fled. Mom actually went by her table later and apologized for me. This was not when I was a child, this was when I was in my late twenties, was well after I'd figured out how to deal with s00j and thought therefore I could speak to any goddess who'd put their words1 on my heart. I was wrong.)
Despite all that, I don't actually read her books *that* often. There are _huge_ swaths of Valdemar that I simply never read --I think I read the first of Abrich's two books and nothing since. And with three exceptions, I haven't reread most of her stuff in like a decade. (Vanyel I will never reread again2).
Those three exceptions though...By the Sword, Oathbreakers, Silver Gryphon. I probably read each of those at least once every eighteen months, and have since I first found them. I own at least two copies of By the Sword, because the main one has the cover totally destroyed at this point. I think at one point I owned three copies of Oathbreakers! I love these three books like little else.
But it's time for a reread of more than just those, apparently, and that has been very interesting to me. Most interesting of all, to find what things are just so important as to lance through and _hit_. What makes you cry, little childe? Not a damned thing in By the Sword or Oathbreakers anymore, I know those stories forwards and sideways, the happy and the sad.
But I finished rereading Oathbreakers and picked up Talia for the first time in ages. A bit shocked to find I don't _really_ care for large swaths of Arrow's Flight and Arrow's Fall. Kris bores me, to be frank, and his plotlines felt dull and contrived. I am not touched when he passes, and Talia's torture is obviously horrific, but among other things, I know there is an eventual happily ever after I can look towards.
But Arrows of the Queen...gods. It caught me, repeatedly. Caught me in, as the kids would say, "the feels" and gave me the space and impetus to sob in catharsis3. Multiple moments, multiple unexpected places, just...look, I don't hold a love for Talia as deep as I do for Kero, and I never will, but go back and read what I said about how badly I want a Companion. Arrows of the Queen is the book that starts it all off, that there are magnificent heroes, who ride magnificent fairytale beings, and you can't buy yourself into their ranks you just have to be good, be so good that you will give all that you can to others, that you will make the world a better place with all that you do.
It's not the slightest bit healthy, it's never been healthy (and I love the hints that Talia sees about how unhealthy that suicidal sacrifice can be) and maybe the thing that hurts most is not that it's an unhealthy way for me to live, but that, because I have never been Chosen, perhaps that means I am not good enough to be a Herald.
(Unless you have blue eyes that can see into my soul, I advise you not argue with that idea one way or another.)
So yeah. Talia gets Chosen from nothing and gets to live the dream, and so what if it means a lot of hard work and pain and sacrifice and suffering. I have already given that erosion of boundaries, when I was younger and more foolish and thought that to soothe someone else's flame was worth the smothering of your own. Let me give it again, if it means I can heal the world.
So I finished Talia, and I reread By the Sword, which was as always excellent but doesn't make me cry. The older I get, the more I love Kerowyn --she's not necessarily someone to live up to, but there's strength in that severity, and training, and poise. Then hiatus for a few weeks, and finally I picked up the first Mage Winds book.
As vaguely recalled, Elspeth is mostly always great, Darkwind tends to be boring, and I will read every word of Nyara or Need ten times over. About two thirds of the book I recognized I was well and fully hooked, I finished the first at three last night and am most of the way through the second now.
And here's the thing that shook me solid, that made me tear up with...contentment and love and mischief and joy. Book two of the trilogy, page 446: One set of ice-blue eyes over a black veil caught her attention; one of those eyes winked, slowly, and deliberately. :Be at peace, little sister-in-power, student of my student.:
Because I _love_ Kero, I adore her, but she keeps showing up and being great and intimidating and take-charge and badass. She's woven into these books, not like her own, but as a magnificent supporting character.
Meanwhile, Tarma is never named again.
We don't know what happens to her, after the first third of By the Sword, tossing her grandchild out into the world. Her and Kethry are barely alluded to, their adventures are long since done. An occasional reference of "my teacher" but nothing current, nothing to make it clear they still exist...and by all rights, it's long past the time when they should. They are as old as Selaney's grandparents, and Selaney herself is old enough to have a fully adult daughter. It is...not a stretch that they have since died, hopefully peaceful, well.
And getting to see her again, getting to Know that she is at home with her goddess, full leshy'a Kal'endral...it is good to my heart. If I recall correct, she returns for a bit in the mage storms (which I am genuinely looking forward to reread, they have some of my favourite characters) and I look forward to that too, but there is just...hope, here. I think that is the thing that hits me square in the Self, that knowing that there was a final happily ever after of sorts means that maybe there is _hope_ for this horrific fucked up world.
This entry was a lot. I'm maybe sorry for that, but mostly not. We latch, when we are young, and if we are lucky we latch onto things that tell us that there is hope, and that the greatest goal is to help others.
Wind beneath your wings.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: Consider: I have said before that my veins flow with ink, alluded to the importance of spilling that ink onto pages as a way of finding myself and learning my sanity. But if ink is flowing out, musn't ink also be flowing in? There are words that I choose to reabsorb, over and over, because sometimes I need to find something stable to keep me here and well.
2: Yeah, the first time I read Van was before I was raped, and it sucked and was Very Sad --he may have been the first fictional character I ever seriously cried for. The second time I read that trilogy was roundabouts college with everything else, the same time period in which I was realizing what had been done to me. I do not care for unhappily ever after, I want my escapism exactly that and have known this of myself for a long time. It is dramatic (and probably untrue) to say I will _never_ again touch the last Herald Mage, but I will have to be well prepared for exactly what it is.
3: I figure I, and probably damn near everyone else in America, is in a mild state of shock right now. Things are so obscenely painfully bad that to think about them and confront them is to break with the horror of just how bad _everything_ is. So we put ourselves in shock, make acerbic jokes, and hope and pray to any gods possible that maybe somehow this will work out okay in the end and only a few hundred thousand of us will die and the children will be let out of their cages and we can all live and love our lives in community and safety instead of poverty and neglect. I don't need to remind anyone that things are _really_ bad right now, but maybe I should remind you that it's okay to find impetus to cry, to cry hard, and then to drink some water and come back to the fight.
no subject
on 2020-07-19 09:03 pm (UTC)