skygiants | (no subject)

Before I reread The Eagle and the Nightingale I went back and found my copy of The Lark and the Wren, because I wanted to remember how Wacky Bardic Fantasyland worked without being distracted by JUST ENOUGH DUDE.

And I might not have gotten a chance to make this properly clear in the last review, but I feel like it's important to note that Wacky Bardic Fantasyland is the most comfortably low-rent fantasy universe imaginable. It is full of every possible cliche. It is also called Alanda, because Mercedes Lackey could not be bothered to come up with a country name that was literally not just "A LAND."

The Lark and the Wren doesn't really have a plot, per se. The first part is about our plucky musical teenaged heroine Rune running away from home and trying to become a Bard, in the course of which quest she learns that:

- the pseudo-Catholic Church is evil and oppressive and spies on everyone
- prostitution is terrible, except when you're hanging out with the special CLASSY FEMINIST PROSTITUTES who are totally happy with what they do and only entertain sweet-hearted guys who sometimes just come to play board games with them, and then it's totally okay
- because she's a good person, all the other good and righteous people in A LAND will like her on sight, and all the bad and/or annoying people in A LAND will dislike her on sight, and vice versa!

The second half of the book comes after she has tried out for the Bardic Guild and learned that they are all terrible people and then joined up with the Free Bards, who are composed mostly of free-spirited magical mysterious musical Gypsies, although their leader is a middle-aged white dude called Talaysen who is the best of the best of the musicians ever.

The second part of the book is pretty much a hundred pages of this:

TALAYSEN: Oh no, I am lusting after Rune! But she is a teenager! And my student! I'M A MONSTEEEEEEER.
RUNE: Hey sexy, what is it going to take to get your pants off? I will strip naked and get in your bed if I have to.
TALAYSEN: . . . Rune clearly does not understand that her simple country friendliness has the potential for misinterpretation. :( :( :(

True story: I remembered Talaysen as being at least forty.

varadia remembered him as being over fifty.

jothra informed us that he was only thirty-five.

"THERE IS NO WAY," I said. "He was like a million years old!"

But it turns out that Talaysen was actually only thirty-five, it's just that it was hard not to remember him as like a million years old because he KEPT GOING ON ABOUT IT. Cheer up, Talaysen! Yes, the age difference is problematic, but at least you're not a giant bird.

Anyway then there is a whole slew of helpful cliches involving a STORM and EVIL ELVES and NEAR HYPOTHERMIA and I MUST GET NAKED TO SAVE HER LIFE, and then after all this is sorted out they kind of stumble into the third part of the book, which involves a lost prince and magical assassins and an anti-coup and all this other suddenly very dramatic after the first four hundred pages of Rune tooling around with her fiddle. However I don't mind the sudden DRAMA, because it is also actually kind of weirdly adorable, and Mercedes Lackey is trying really hard to subvert cliches. Given that A LAND is made up 100% of cliches, this is sort of difficult, but it's nice to see the effort!

Now I am trying to decide if I want to reread the rest of the Wacky Bardic Fantasyland books now that I've begun. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME. TASTE IS FOR THE WEAK.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/278265.html

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From:

ceitfianna

Age difference seems to be a thing that Lackey likes as in most of the Elemental Masters books, the men are always older and worry about being too old.

I never find it too jarring because they are historical and there's a sense of well, yes, that's how it tended to work out. Your write ups are just making me realize that this might be more of a Lackey thing.

From:

skygiants

It is totally a Lackey thing - it happens at least once in the Valdemar books too. I think mostly because it's a foolproof source for ANGST! I have to give T'Fyrr points: for all his angsting over everything else, once he realized he was Nightingale, he was on that, man. No pining!

Edited Date: 2012-01-27 06:53 am (UTC)

From:

ceitfianna

Now I'm curious to read these books as I do sort of like her stuff and I haven't read these ones.

From:

bookblather

ALWAYS REMEMBER. Taste is for people who hate America. And also, I love The Lark and the Wren. I need to reread all of these books again. IT'S YOUR FAULT.

(also, isn't Ardis in this one? I kinda love Ardis. A lot.)

From:

silveraspen

Re: Ardis: Yes, she is. :)

Also, a warning -- DO NOT read the stand-alone one centered on her if you like her in this one! Unless I am misremembering it horribly, I recall being SO DISAPPOINTED in it.

From:

skygiants

I never even knew there was a stand-alone Ardis-centered one! But sounds like I was lucky not to know . . .? D:

From:

genarti

Oh my god, is this A Cast of Corbies or whatever it was? Co-written with... was it Josepha Sherman?

SO BAD. SO DISAPPOINTING.

I don't even remember the actual plot of it, except in scattered fragments. I know it was a SERIAL KILLER MYSTERY and our plucky heroes were hired to INVESTIGATE that some mystery priest was killing Gypsies and other free-spirited musician sorts, and it was all incredibly ham-handed. MAYBE THE EVIL GUY WHO KEEPS LURKING AROUND CHEWING SCENERY AND FROTHING TO HIMSELF IS... EVIL...??? Also there was a dramatic fire at the end, which I guess made a memorable end to the trade fair or whatever it was.

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