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juushikaTitle: Magic's Pawn (The Last Herald Mage Book 1)
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Published: New York: Daw Books, 1991 (1989)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 349
Total Page Count: 139,121
Text Number: 408
Read Because: personal enjoyment, e-book borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Smothered by his oppressive country family, Vanyel is given a second chance when he's sent to the city to live with his aunt, a Herald instructor. But his maturation begets tragedy, and magic, and perhaps war. Magic's Pawn seems intended to be a powerful emotional journey of love and loss, but Lackey expresses almost no understanding of human emotion. Vanyel lives in emotional extremes, his character growth is delineated and repetitive, and most of all his experience and reactions are both so tragic that the book reads as pure—and problematic, given that it exploits links between homosexuality and suffering—melodrama. When I read these books as a teenager, the melodrama worked for me—it's an exaggerated analog to the teenage experience, and the gay protagonist made it in equal parts intriguing and sympathetic. Now, it provides a soap-opera readability but is deeply flawed. Although the emotional journey often feels ad hoc, this trilogy has obvious, even heavy-handed, plot direction—and I will continue it, largely to see how my teenage impressions continue to line up with the text. But I don't recommend it, in whole or part.
As a side note, I hadn't realized the similarity between Valdemar and Pern. Magic's Pawn underplays the Herald and Companion structure well-established in other books (although the magical Native American-equivalent which is explored instead is, too, problematic), but both the magic systems and the societies are eerily similar, from their excessive capitalized nouns to their magically-enforced relationships. Of the latter, in this book, after Vanyel's first sexual experience he immediately becomes roommates with his lover (at his guardian's suggestion), who turns out to be his soul mate—it's almost as creepy as the rape in Pern.
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Published: New York: Daw Books, 1991 (1989)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 349
Total Page Count: 139,121
Text Number: 408
Read Because: personal enjoyment, e-book borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Smothered by his oppressive country family, Vanyel is given a second chance when he's sent to the city to live with his aunt, a Herald instructor. But his maturation begets tragedy, and magic, and perhaps war. Magic's Pawn seems intended to be a powerful emotional journey of love and loss, but Lackey expresses almost no understanding of human emotion. Vanyel lives in emotional extremes, his character growth is delineated and repetitive, and most of all his experience and reactions are both so tragic that the book reads as pure—and problematic, given that it exploits links between homosexuality and suffering—melodrama. When I read these books as a teenager, the melodrama worked for me—it's an exaggerated analog to the teenage experience, and the gay protagonist made it in equal parts intriguing and sympathetic. Now, it provides a soap-opera readability but is deeply flawed. Although the emotional journey often feels ad hoc, this trilogy has obvious, even heavy-handed, plot direction—and I will continue it, largely to see how my teenage impressions continue to line up with the text. But I don't recommend it, in whole or part.
As a side note, I hadn't realized the similarity between Valdemar and Pern. Magic's Pawn underplays the Herald and Companion structure well-established in other books (although the magical Native American-equivalent which is explored instead is, too, problematic), but both the magic systems and the societies are eerily similar, from their excessive capitalized nouns to their magically-enforced relationships. Of the latter, in this book, after Vanyel's first sexual experience he immediately becomes roommates with his lover (at his guardian's suggestion), who turns out to be his soul mate—it's almost as creepy as the rape in Pern.
