The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey

After reading about a quarter way through this book, I realized it was actually book #4 in a series called The Elemental Masters. Now, this is pretty good, since I never got much of a feeling that I had missed "what has gone before," and was able to enjoy it as a stand-alone novel. I'll probably pick up the earlier books in the series at the library one of these days, just to catch up on things.

I do, however, remember now why I quit reading Lackey's books a few years ago. She had reached that point in an author's career where, in my opinion, she had nothing really new to say. I first noticed this phenomenon in the works of Heinlein about five years before his death, and later in the works of Eddings, which up to that point had been delightful.

The story is about a young girl, Sarah, whose parents are missionaries in Africa. For her safety, they send her home to England to a boarding school run by Isabelle Harton and her husband, Frederick. Many boarding schools are horrible places, run by misers and bullies, but this one is full of loving care, and has the added benefit of helping psychically gifted youngsters learn to use and control their talents. Isabelle and Frederick, and several of their staff, are Warriors of the Light, and when they manifest their avatars, do battle with the forces of darkness wherever they are found.

Isabelle also rescues a street waif named Nan, who possesses psychic ability, and a considerable portion of the book details her integration (a la Eliza Doolittle) into the school. Sarah and Nan, of course, become the best of friends, and eventually fall into some misadventures discovering and defeating, with the help of the Warriors, several evil minions.

Ok, here's a couple of things I consider to be the downside to this book. First, Lackey seems to have fallen into that same rut which Heinlein fell into in his latter days, that all of the good guys in the books are simply "too good to be true." When most of the surrounding culture is horribly prejudiced against the foreign, they are not only tolerant, but embrace other cultures. Three of the "servants" in the school are a Sikh, a Gurkha, and a Moslem (they also are extremely wise and filled with the spirit of brotherhood).

While the majority of the marriages in their culture are arranged, political and loveless, Isabelle and Frederick's union is blissful, loving and *gasp* enjoys the "carnal" relations. In the household and school, disputes are always rationally discussed, children are lovingly disciplined in creative ways (rather than resorting to crude corporal measures), students and servants cheerfully do their chores...et cetera, et cetera, et-freakin' cetera. The word that came to mind when I was considering the characters in this book (and upon reflection, in Lackey's recent works) was "insipid."

In the plot, the tension slowly (agonizingly so) builds. There is a certain nobleman, David Alderscroft, who was a former beau of Isabelle's, winkled away from her in the past by Cordelia, the ice princess incarnate. Cordelia, not so surprisingly, has an ancient evil ally, some sort of ice dragon locked in a glacier, and appears to have a goal of -dare I say it - world domination. Over the course of the book, her plot slowly works its way to fruition. David has been influenced over the years to go along with her scheme, by appealing to his sense that aristocrats surely must know best how to govern the masses. However, at the climactic moment, when good and evil must surely battle, our intrepid heroes manage to TALK THE ENEMY INTO GIVING UP! Is that exciting, or what? Of course, the enemy was merely duped in the first place so, of course, love is all you really need. Why can't we all just get along?

Short Takes

(10/22/08) Regarding the Zelazny stuff in Manna from Heaven, there's a reason it wasn't previously published. Most of it was unfinished/unpolished/disconnected. The Amber stuff at the end seemed to be going somewhere, but he must have passed before he could finish it, which is a real pity.

(11/12/08) Finished reading the chronicle of Lavan Firestorm (Brightly Burning) last night. I really used to like Mercedes Lackey's stuff, and it's still good for some semi-amusing light reading.

(11/13/08) Started re-reading Beguilement, by Bujold. I don't like this fantasy series as well as the Chalion stuff, but it's still Bujold.

The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey

(review written in 1996)

Just finished The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey, and found it to be worth the price; slightly more than a movie ticket these days. This is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast theme that provided me with a couple of evening's entertainment. The tone of this novel is on more of an adult level than most of her fantasy novels, and certainly more adult than the Disney version of B&B.

The heroine is Rosalind Hawkins, a young scholar of medieval literature whose father has died and left her penniless. She is offered a position, ostensibly as a governess to the children of a reclusive rail baron , which removes her from her native Chicago to the wilds of the California coast near San Francisco. When she arrives, she finds out that there are no children, and that she has actually been recruited to assist the railroad magnate, Jason Cameron, in his research of medieval magical tomes.

She is not aware at first, however, that the reason of Cameron's reclusive habits is that he is a magician, a master of the elemental magic of fire, who has been changed into a half-human, half-beast by a spell which backfired. The plot of the story, of course, is her gradual discovery of who and what he is, and her coming to terms with his beastly nature.

What makes the whole book fun, however, is that Rosalind herself has the potential to become a mage, a mistress of the elemental magic of air. Lackey treats us to a light dissertation on the workings of elemental magic, and the training and discipline of a proper magician's apprentice. There's some marvelous intrigue and conflict built into the story by her introduction of an evil rival fire mage, and untimely betrayal by Cameron's first apprentice.

I won't spoil it all for you by letting you know how it all turns out, but suffice it to say that Lackey provides a new twist at the end of an old, old story. I'll probably even read this one again after sufficient time has passed, or she's come up with some sort of sequel.

Owlsight by Mercedes Lackey

Owlsight, sequel to Owlflight, is a fair-to-middlin' piece of adolescent fantasy (no, no not that kind of adolescent fantasy!). We pick up the story of Damian a year or so after the last book and also weave in the tale of Keithra, a young healer in the village of Errold's Grove.


Once again, too much time has passed since I read the first book in the series, and it wasn't worth investing the time re-reading it to get the feeling for how this book fits into the larger tapestry of the Valdemar series, so I ended up reading this one in fits and starts. One of Lackey's problems in some of her recent fiction is the whole concept that all of the "good guys" in the story will somehow be reasonable and nice and live happily ever after, once their minor misunderstandings are out of the way. It seems as if, at one time, Lackey actually put together some really nasty villains in her novels and built characters with depth.

The more I read, however, the less I cared about how things turned out. The trials and tribulations of Damian's and Keithra's coming of age weren't all that exciting. I'll probably pick up the last book in this set, Owlknight, just to avoid a gap on the bookshelves, but I'll wait till it hits the used bookstores.