Mercedes Lackey: Closer to Home
Nov. 6th, 2014 07:53 pmFluffy and lightweight as it has been compared even to other of her novels and series, I have been enjoying Mercedes Lackey's latest Valdemar-based Colliegium series about abused child labourer Mags saved form a nasty, brutish and short life through the miraculous appearance of one of those blue-eyed guardian spirits in horse form that serve as Companions to the Heralds of Valdemar. After several books exploring the personal growth of Mags and his friends and the development of the Collegium itself as the new way of training Heralds, Lackey has started a new series, still focused on Mags, called The Herald Spy.
Closer to Home is the first book of this new series, and it's fun. Yes, the content is pretty light after some of Lackey's earlier world-saving plots, but I rather enjoy seeing the day-to-day life of a young Herald preparing to take over the role of Spymaster to the King. To say nothing of his partner in all things, Amily the old Spymaster's daughter, who has some massive new responsibilities of her own to shoulder. And the decidedly anti-romantic variation on the star-crossed lovers themes that forms the plot, such as it is, pleases me. I always thought Romeo and Juliet were hormonally challenged idiots.