skygiants | (no subject)

So a few weeks back,

jothra had come down to visit and we were hanging out in my living room, and the conversation turned to Mercedes Lackey and other books that we read when we were thirteen, as it so often does.

The relevant dialogue went something like this:

"Remember how she had all those animal people as love interests? Part-animal people? But somehow it was never a problem for sexytimes, because they were only part animal, and -"
"JUST ENOUGH DUDE!"
"YES! JUST ENOUGH DUDE in the place where it counted!"

And then we proceeded to shriek "JUST ENOUGH DUDE!" at each other all the rest of the week, because we are twelve.

The best example of this phenomenon was definitely The Fire Rose, in which the hero gets cursed with a terrible hairy wolfy appearance . . . from the nipples up and the knees down. In between, he's totally normal!

I have sadly lost my copy of The Fire Rose, but, as it happens, I do have my copy of The Eagle and the Nightingale, the one where the hero is basically a man-sized raptor who happens to have a penis. Not only that, but some strange impulse had prompted me to bring it up from me when I came back from Philadelphia the day before Jo actually arrived in New York. Jo also had her copy at home, so the path before us had clearly been prepared.

I am now going to present a book review via VERY SERIOUS text message.

bookelfe: Just hit Freehold! Oh, fantasyland's first food court.

jothra: Oh, you're catching up! She just finished her first night.

(For context: the book takes place in a medievalish fantasy land creatively called Alanda, which has a.) Gypsies, b.) awesome cool bards, c.) various nonhuman species to fit every plot need, including providing your medievalish fantasy land with electric lights and magical deus ex machina, and d.) a mostly evil church that mostly exists to persecute all the sympathetic Gypsies and bards and nonhuman species. Our Heroine is Nightingale, a Gypsy harpist who is also a SPY in the CAPITAL who is there to fix everything that is wrong in the kingdom and is in the meantime working at Freehold, Supercool Nonhuman Medieval Nightclub. T'Fyrr is an angsty singing birdman who likewise likewise except he is working for the king.)

bookelfe: Hahaha T'Fyrr is THE EMOEST birdmandude.

jothra: You realize he is the brooding heroine in this book, right? Especially since he got damseled in the last one.

(T'Fyrr is angsty, for the record, because he got kidnapped last book and put in a cage and then accidentally killed a dude trying to escape and it WOUNDS his SOUL.)

bookelfe: He is SO the damsel. Also I had forgotten that in addition to the first food court, Freehold also introduces fantasyland to strobe lights and glam rock!

jothra: Yes. I am now to where they are SHARING THEIR SOULS.

bookelfe: HAH, yeah, just got there. SHE FEELS HIS PAIN! SHE CAN NEVER UNDO THE BOND!

(Nightingale is like semi-telepathic and looked into his SOUL and whatever whatever magic mind-linkage soulmate thing.)

jothra: And angsting and weeping for him. Soon: Just Enough Dude.

bookelfe: Like George Washington: IT'S COMING.

jothra: So overwrought. I like how he is all: I must protect her she is so delicate!! And she has saved his ass twice now.

(It will be at least three times by the time the book is over.)

bookelfe: FRAGILE NIGHTINGALE. Indeed. And she's just like, pardon me, supercompetent magician spy with magic elf training over here?

jothra: But she is not a double O. No killing!

bookelfe: Of course! Killing leads to ANGST and SORROW and SOULWOUNDS.

jothra: I guess I don't get it. The guy was going to kill him. No killing is a great creed, it's mine too. But if I had to kill someone to save my life, I don't think I'd angst a book over it.

(Then I had stuff to do so I could not text back what I wanted to, which is: this is a Mercedes Lackey book, it's not complete unless someone angsts the length of it over something. And Nightingale is getting all the 'FOREVER ALONE' angst in so T'Fyrr has to angst about something else. Logic!)

jothra: JUST ENOUGH DUDE. She knows now!

bookelfe: I am not quite there yet but I am excited! So close!

jothra: They haven't done anything yet, her soulbond just informed her.

(It does. Her telepathic bond is like, 'hey, you know, you could totally hit that. Species difference ain't no thing.')

bookelfe: No time to read yesterday, but now I am done! HAWKS DON'T HAVE WHAT T'FYRR HAS.

jothra: Oh, the lulz. The denouement wasn't too bad, though! I liked it.

bookelfe: No, not bad!

And then we started talking about some of the actual Mercedes Lackey issues - serious transfail, reasonably decent treatment of a bisexual character (Silas, Medieval Fantasy Inventor of Glam Rock at Medieval Fantasy Nightclub Freehold), how disappointing it was when the canon threesome in the racecar elf books fell apart. But the most important thing, obviously, is that Nightingale and her giant hawk boyfriend live happily ever after. And I guess all the problems in the country get solved too I guess. Whatever. (Oh, MY CHILDHOOD.)

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/277815.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

jothra

JUST

From:

jothra

ENOUGH

From:

jothra

DUDE

From:

skygiants

I DON'T KNOW WHAT MORE THERE IS TO SAY THAN THAT

From:

jothra

Now I just have to stop myself from reading more. Because I happen to have The Fire Rose right on my shelf over there.

From:

skygiants

AHH! You are only allowed if you then send it to me. Bonus points for margin annotations.

From:

jothra

Oh, you're a cruel woman.

From:

thewickedlady

You are both on crack. Just fyi! In case you didn't know!

From:

wakeupnew

I am cackling UNCONTROLLABLY

From:

jothra

I COULD SEND IT TO YOU

FOR...RESEARCH PURPOSES

From:

aeslis

Oh my god, I think I love you.

From:

skygiants

AND I LOVE MERCEDES LACKEY.

From:

bookblather

Silas is awesome. AND I LOVE THE FIRE ROSE FOREVER I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK I DO WHAT I WANT XD

From:

skygiants

HAHAHAHAHA SO DO I. WHO NEEDS 'TASTE'?

From:

bookblather

TASTE IS FOR PEOPLE WHO HATE LULZ. AND AMERICA.

From:

ceitfianna

*giggles* I love Lackey's stuff sometimes but she has her points of oh my.

After all in Reserved for the Cat, he's dude when he needs to be.

From:

skygiants

Hahaha, have not even read that one but SO NOT SURPRISED. Oh, Mercedes Lackey. SO WILDLY UNPREDICTABLE.

From:

ceitfianna

I really like her Elemental Masters books because when they work, they really work, some of them just left me confused.

Fire Rose did that and Reserved for the Cat is another one where I kept thinking, huh, you didn't plan this out as well as you should have. It's a good read but it's nowhere near as good as some of the others.

Phoenix and Ashes is still my utter favorite and I'm going to do a reread of Gates of Sleep soon.

From:

skygiants

Fire Rose is actually the only one I read before I hit my cutoff threshold for Mercedes Lackey - it's like magic, everything I read before I was fifteen I love in a total id-fic way, and everything after that it was too late for that piece of my id. But Fire Rose will forever hold a special place in my heart!

From:

ceitfianna

That makes sense. I read the Bedlam Bards series when I was younger and loved it but Phoenix and Ashes only a few years ago and had a moment of ooh.

I'm still not sure why, there's just something about that book which works for me. She's not one of my id writers especially as I never got into the Vandemar series but when I want slightly thoughtful fantasy, she works.

From:

rymenhild

And then of course there is Nyara in the Elspeth books, the one who is furry, has feline flitted eyes, and pointy ears, and yet is JUST ENOUGH WOMAN to be Skif's lover.

(About Nyara's father, the evil abusive bisexual catman mage who is the REINCARNATION OF ALL THE MERCEDES LACKEY VILLAINS EVER, the less said, the better.)

From:

skygiants

To be fair, much as I hate that plotline, at least Nyara was (horrifically) designed to be a sexy catgirl. But I cannot imagine why the designers of whatever magic GONE HORRIBLY WRONG caused the guy in The Fire Rose's accident were especially worried about his ability to get it on with human ladies . . .

From:

jothra

Maybe they were kinky evil magic users.

*hates self*

From:

skygiants

WELL IT WOULD EXPLAIN A LOT.

From:

mneme

*giggle* I think I'd stopped reading Lackey some time before this point.

From:

skygiants

I think my cutoff point is somewhere around 1999/2000. But all the JUST ENOUGH DUDE stuff was classic nineties Lackey and well within my repertoire!

From:

mneme

Right. I think my cutoff was sometime around the late 80s. I read some Tregarde after that and enjoyed it, but...

From:

opusculasedfera

Haha, oh god, this is amazingly true. The hilarious bit is that I know I read The Eagle and the Nightingale while young and dumb (fuck, I still own it), but managed to overlook all the bird sexing until you opened my eyes! So, uh, thanks a lot, I guess.

From:

skygiants

YOU'RE WELCOME. :D

(My young-and-dumb memory of this book focused on three very simple things:
- the wicked cool nightclub
- the fancy elf dresses
- the bird sexing

Which shows you what a refined and high-minded teenager I was!)

From:

oyceter

Omg this reminds me the time at Wiscon when a group of us were randomly talking about Mercedes Lackey, and someone brought up how traumatized they had been by Jody Lynn Nye's very anatomically correct male horses. I didn't remember this, so we had to pull up the cover of Arrows of the Queen so we could all ogle the NOT ENOUGH DUDE horse penis.