Mercedes Lackey is an interesting writer. An author of fantasy, she has written over fifty books, set in a variety of well-conceived, imaginative worlds. She’s retold classic fairy tales, setting them in a magic-ridden Victorian and Edwardian England, as well as high fantasy full of quests, nobility and Striving Against the Evil Hordes. A great number of her books are set in Valedmar, a world of magical spirits, active deities and late Middle Ages – early Rennaissance cultures.
Three of her best books are collectively called the Vows and Honor series. Oathbound, Oathbreakers and Oathblood tell the tales of one of the most engaging warrior/wizard pairings to come along since Arthur and Merlin. The one is Tarma, the sole survivor of a massacred clan from a horse-nomad culture, sworn to serve her people’s Goddess as an ascetic warrior-monk. The other is Kethry, sorceress, castoff from a noble family, possessed of an earthy sense of humour and a magical sword.
Oathbound is the first volume and establishes the pair’s twofold motives; to rebuild Tarma’s shattered Clan and to gain a respected enough reputation to open a training school for aspiring swordswingers and spellslingers. Unlike many of their literary contemporaries, Tarma and Kethry use brains as often as brawn in solving their problems and always with refreshingly ironic humour.
The book has an episodic quality, as though it was originally several short stories now bracketed by introductory and climactic scenarios. Such construction would doom many a writer, but Lackey pulls them all together with the gradual evolution of her protagonists and lively, original storytelling that prevents the book from becoming a series of “another day, another deed.”
The second volume, Oathbreakers, has the pair as established members of a mercenary fighting Company, getting involved in royal intrigue, plots, assassination attempts, infiltration, exfiltration, and True Love, to list but a few of the assorted goings-on and shenanigans that assail our heroes. This book is much more tightly plotted, with engaging minor characters and appropriately nasty villains, who really do get what’s coming to them.
If Oathbreakers has a flaw, it’s a couple of coincidences that strain credulity and seem as if Lackey was merrily writing her heroes into one progressively narrower scrape after another, when she realised that she needed the story Moved Along. It’s almost like a literary hiccup in between smooth, coherent writing. Don’t let that prevent you from reading the book, though; they’re easily forgiven as you race along to the next “how are they going to get out of this one?”
Oathblood is an anthology of short stories anchored by a novella. I think most of the tales originally appeared in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies. This is a collection of extremely entertaining tales. Tarma and Kethry get into and out of all manner of odd conundra and puzzling situations. Two of my personal favourites are the cursed coin and the locked room mystery. Enough said…….
There are plenty more Mercedes Lackey stories on my shelf. Maybe I should stop reading and start writing about them.
