Required Reading

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Monday, February 4, 2013

Crown of Vengeance by Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory


 



All hail a new trilogy from the mistress of magical stories!  Hmm, if you expect dispassionate diatribes you are at the wrong blog.   I suppose Ms. Lackey could write something I wouldn’t like but I suspect not!   Mr. Mallory is new, to me.   Obviously I am now forced to check out his work as this was a wonderful beginning to a new trilogy set in a bucolic world of dark and light where white has no idea that black exists.  It is a story of kingdom building not due to lust or greed but due to a dismal prophecy.



Vieliessar of Farcarinon finds herself living a monastic life without the benefit of any magic.   She is a child of a disgraced and destroyed High House in a culture that has ennobled battle to an art form.   She is an angry child that grows into an angry young woman searching for self identity.   



The book continues in the Lackey tradition with poetic imagery found in battle and in Flower Forests.   The simplistic nature of the basic plot of dark against light does not detract one whit from the complexity of the story.  Bards will sing of the books and the heroic and despicable populace of this, the first book, in The Dragon Prophecy trilogy.







http://merlinscribe.dreamwidth.org/


This book may have been received free of charge from a publisher or a publicist. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.

2 comments:

  1. I haven't read this one yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed their Obsidian Mountain trilogy, and I have their follow-up Enduring Flame trilogy cued up for a read next. Lackey is clearly no stranger to coauthoring, but her and Mallory make a good pair.

    Lackey remains blissfully out of sync with the current trend of gritty, realistic, (anti)heroic fantasy, and I count on her for that - she is one of the authors I rely on when I want some 'classical' fantasy, complete with magic, elves, dragons, and (as you so eloquently put it) poetic imagery.

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