(no subject)

So when I got my Kindle, genarti bought me a digital version of The Black Gryphon as an inaugural bit of nostalgia to put on it. The most important thing about The Black Gryphon obviously is that it is the only Mercedes Lackey book to feature NOT ENOUGH DUDE.

-- okay, there are a couple new people around here now, so I feel justified in copy/pasting this joke again for people who were not around last year when jothra and I went on one of our regularly scheduled nostalgic Mercedes Lackey reminiscences:

"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!"

But alas! In The Black Gryphon, a hot lady gryphon, due to a misunderstanding, tackles a human dude for sexytimes and he has to spend several embarrassing moments explaining to this poor insecure lady gryphon that NO, REALLY, IT'S NOT HER, IT'S HIM, HE WOULD TOTALLY HIT THAT IF HE COULD BUT HE HAS JUST NOT GOT THE RIGHT BITS AND PERHAPS THEY WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITH THEIR OWN SPECIES, and it was deeply awkward for all concerned, including the reader.

This is basically notable for being a speciesist distinction that Mercedes Lackey will never make again. (Well, I guess the Herald who is in love with his horse never actually gets it on with the horse. I think. BUT MAYBE I'M WRONG.)

I mean, I guess there was also a plot in this book, sort of. Basically there's some kind of giant terrible magic war going on, and Our Heroes are Skandranon, who is a saucy gryphon, and his bff Amberdrake, who is a sexy masseuse-psychologist-courtesan with magical healing skills and an angsty and exoticised past -- basically the tragic dude equivalent of Inara from Firefly.

Then they meet Zhaneel, hot lady gryphon with low self-esteem, but she gets magically better as soon as she has a talk with magical psychologist Amberdrake (once they have gotten the unfortunate Not Enough Dude incident out of the way). And then Amberdrake meets Winterhart, another lady with low self-esteem that starts getting magically better as soon as he starts hanging out with her, because that's what sexy masseuse-psychologist-courtesans do. And it turns out Amberdrake and Winterhart are magical soulmates, and Amberdrake gives Zhaneel some terrible advice about pretending she doesn't like Skandranon to get him interested in her and then they're grypn soulmates and that's all good. Oh, and the leader of the war/creator of the gryphons has been creepily controlling them by not giving them the secret to have baby gryphons, but it turns out he was just doing it for their own good, and when they steal it back he's all "lol you wacky gryphon scamps!" and everything's still fine.

But in case you were worried everything was going too well, Winterhart's Evil Ex-Boyfriend That Everyone Hated and Zhaneel's Evil Former General That Everyone Hated get together and DRAMATIC PLOT TWISTS OF BETRAYAL THAT SURPRISED NO ONE, because the only evil people in the world are the people our protagonists disliked from the beginning for their convenient lack of any redeeming traits. At least that's how it works in proto-Valdemar!

. . . so I guess that only sort of counts as a plot. Oh well!