(no subject)

[skygiants]

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!

Comments

[silveraspen]

I suppose you could also call the not-really-secret plot of the book being ALL BACKSTORY ALL THE TIME for series-to-come: namely, the Mage Winds Trilogy and basically everything after that.

...why do I know this. why. I can never unsee.

Also no, Lavan Firestorm and Companion Kalira never physically express their mutual doomed lifebonded-and-Companionsoulbonded love. At least not that we ever see. They don't actually appear to be AWARE of it. *facepalm*

(Does gryphon + gryfalcon count as cross-species? Probably not, huh.)

[skygiants]

I have really fond memories of the Mage Winds trilogy . . . which is the reason I'm kind of afraid to reread them. But a plot about acknowledging that people who are not super special chosen heroes can also be helpful and relevant! Romances that do not involve soulmates . . . and sometimes break up! WHAT IS THIS MADNESS.

I do not know whether I'm glad to hear that about Lavan and Kalira, or weirdly disappointed.

(Well, it's no human/giant eagle . . )

[jothra]

There were many lols. I am fond of Amberdrake simply because he is not physically badass, nor crazily powerful with magic, like most of the male heroes in the Valdemar stuff.

The stuff with Winterhart is kind of...well. It is sketchy. Just do me a favor and don't read the White Gryphon, okay? You won't like it.

[silveraspen]

Skip straight to Silver, seriously. I think you can get enough from context without having to read White.

[skygiants]

I remembered really liking Winterhart from when I was a kid -- because I like angry ladies! -- and was so disappointed to reread and realize that she was basically . . . there to look Amberdrake look good. (Also, you know what's great? When the one Bechdel-passing conversation with Winterhart and Zhaneel, the one that ACTUALLY makes Winterhart re-evaluate all her life decisions, is completely offscreened. Awesome choice there.)

I have . . . zero recollection of what happens in the White Gryphon. Seriously, zero. I remember what happens in Silver Gryphon, that's the one where everyone's kids go on a camping trip!

[inkstone]

OH THE MEMORIES.

[skygiants]

SO MUCH OF MY CHILDHOOD lives in all these sparkly horse(/gryphon/magical cat/etc.) books.

[sophia_sol]

OH GOSH SO MUCH MERCEDES LACKEY NOSTALGIA. Wow wow wow back in high school I read every single book of hers that my local library had, which was a goodly selection, and these days whenever I get reminded of some of the stuff that HAPPENED in her books I'm just like wow I was an oblivious child.

My favourites were Owlsight-Owlflight-Owlnight, the Mage Winds trilogy, and Fire Rose, iirc. Also the books about Tarma and Kethry. And I am quite sure if I reread any of them today I would be pretty astonished at the contents... :P

[sophia_sol]

Okay so I just went and read your review of The Fire Rose via wandering your Mercedes Lackey tag and WTFFFFF. Wow wow wow, that that is so not what high-school-aged Sophia got out of it. I remember WEREWOLF and AWESOME SCHOLARLY LADY WHO DOESN'T KNOW SHE CAN DO MAGIC and FIRE ELEMENTALS and DRAMATIC EARTHQUAKE and HAPPY ENDING. Also trains. Whorehouses and drugs and an evil villain and the leading man being human in the middle bits are all ENTIRELY NEWS TO ME.

[skygiants]

I think the Owls trilogy was the cutoff line for me -- I have this theory that everyone who read Mercedes Lackey as a kid has that cutoff line, before which everything is NOSTALGIA-FILLED SPARKLY HORSE GLORY and after which very little can be read, if anything, and for me it's the Owl books; a switch flipped in my head and I couldn't get through them at all, and I have yet to successfully read and enjoy anything she published after them.

The Mage Winds books were totally my favorites, though! And the Tarma-Kethry ones I was also SUPER FOND of. And every so often I still feel the need to go back and loll around in a pile of Mercedes Lackey nostalgia, and laugh affectionately at how ridiculous it all is.

[marginaliana]

People's recaps of Mercedes Lackey books almost always make me want to go back and reread them with my current knowledge, as opposed to the 15 year old's worth of knowledge that I first read them with. Somehow I never stopped to think about the weirdness of JUST ENOUGH DUDE at the time (and all the other weird things). I think my attitude was kind of, "Well, okay, sure you can have sex with a guy who's half-cat. This is no stranger than 90% of the other things that media tells me about sex!"

[skygiants]

Hah, yeah, I tended to just kind of roll with it at the time, probably for similar reasons! Rereading them with current knowledge is ALWAYS AN EXPERIENCE, let me put it that way.

[sylleptic]

Ahahaha. The Gryphon ones are the Lackey backstory books that I just for the life of me cannot remember. And have never quite cared enough to go back and refresh my memory, which judging by this post is probably a good thing.

I'm not sure how they escape the rosy nostalgia I have for all the other Valdemar books, honestly. I agree with the cutoff idea you mentioned above, though for me I think it was a question of aging out of them, rather than a switch in the brain. I'd have to check publication dates, but I think the second Owl book was where I caught up to her and had read all the Valdemar books out at the time, and the stuff published after that never quite worked as well for me.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a factor of aging out of them for me too, but it really was not a gradual process -- I was bouncing along happily, loving Valdemar, and then suddenly WHOOPS NO WAIT CAN'T DO IT ANYMORE. And I know exactly where it was because I bought the Owl books, all three, before I realized I couldn't read them! It was very distressing, haha.

And the thing is I can still reread everything I read before that point quite happily, even if I mock it, and even if it is not objectively any better than later books, so it really is some weird line-in-the-sand magic.

[celestinenox]

I mean, I guess there was also a plot in this book, sort of.

This is the best part of any Lackey book. It's like... I was so interested in the character interactions and the awkward almost-violent-gryphon-on-human sexytiems that it wasn't until about ten pages from the end that I realized that nothing much of any importance had happened.

This tends to be the big portion of many of Lackey's books, and yet for those of us who love her anyway, it never seems to be a problem.

Except for The Silver Gryphon. I never finished that one. There was only so much of two people (one human, one gryphon) being lost together in the forest that even I could handle.

[skygiants]

NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE EVER HAPPENS. It's actually really kind of amazing. Like, the world is totally threatened and there's always villain and everything, but everybody is sooooooort of too busy bopping around being too anxious about their interpersonal angst to care? Until DRAMATIC DENOUEMENT SOMETHING AT THE END SOMETHING.

And then of course there's all the ones that are actually just three-hundred-page-long road trips (middle Talia book, I'm looking at you!)

[bookblather]

Is it still beastiality if the horse can consent?

...I really don't know why my mind went there. I really don't know why I picked that of all possible reactions.

[skygiants]

Is it still bestiality if the EAGLE-MAN can consent?

I dunno, Mercedes Lackey makes us draw some weird lines, man.

[rushthatspeaks]

Is this where I admit that I skimmed the entirety of the His Lifebonded, A Horse book only to see whether their relationship was consummated? Is this where I admit that I consider Mercedes Lackey to have fallen down on her It Came From The Id duty that it wasn't? It's not as though it would be out of character! Come on, Misty, go for the batshit!

Also, the Owl trilogy is actually that bad, it's not just a line in the sand thing.

I say this because I am able to read the ones she is putting out now whenever I have the flu-- they are good for that-- and I have still never been able to get through those terrible Owl books.

[skygiants]

NO I'M WITH YOU, that pretty much would have been my only question too. Or at least epic angsting over the fact that it couldn't be consummated. Like, if you're going for the horse romance, COMMIT to the horse romance! If you halfway it then WHAT IS THE POINT.

This is probably ALSO true but I've also tried other not-Owl books . . . I definitely sampled a bunch of the fairy tale ones in the bookstore and every time came away with a definite sense of "nope, this one's not happening either."

[bookblather]

HAHAHAHA GO BATSHIT OR GO HOME.

This is my new life motto.

[kate_nepveu]

I am still reading the 500 Kingdom books, but my Valdemar line was these, really, though I did eventually fast-skim the Owl books just because they were there.

[oracne]

Somehow I missed this...if I read it now, will my head explode?!

[skygiants]

I mean, it's pretty standard Valdemar . . . . but not, like, WACKY ESSENCE OF LACKEY, so if you have already built up a reasonable Lackey immunity you should pretty safe!

[genarti]

I think all I can say, cheerfully and belatedly, is YOU'RE WELCOME.

(Amberdrake is totally dude Inara. Wow.)

I can't figure out if you would like The Silver Gryphon or not, mostly because I can barely remember how it goes! Amberdrake and Winterhart's tomboy daughter (who doesn't WANNA do magic or politics or whatever the relevant skill is, she just wants to BE A GUARD but also have her parents' approval) and Skandranon and Zhaneel's son are partners in the border guard or whatever, and they get lost in the complicated magic jungle when some prelude-to-the-Mage-Winds-books stuff goes down, and then Amberdrake and Skan charge to the rescue (only slightly arthritically) and they get lost in the magic jungle, and everyone blunders around for a while, and if there's any other plot at all I do not remember it in the slightest.

[skygiants]

(I WANT THEM TO HANG OUT except not really because they'd just serenely and angstily braid each other's hair and it would probably get kind of boring pretty fast.)

Seriously all I remember about The Silver Gryphon is EVERYONE IS ON VAGUELY ADVENTUROUS CAMPING TRIPS. I think it's another one of the Mercedes Lackey books that falls into the category of "three hundred page road trip! Stuff happens at the end." It's not that these are like the worst of her books or anything, usually they're pretty entertaining, but there are . . . a lot of them . . .

[celestinenox]

Okay, so, very random but....

Last night I had this weird dream where I was in a bookstore, and I found these godsawful "reprints" of the LHM books, only Magic's Pawn was titled "In the Name of the Horse" (WTF?) and the new title for Magic's Promise had something to do with a volcano (O.o), and I couldn't even find Magic's Price.

I was very indignant.