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.

They’re also among the less interesting. Eternal, noble, possessed of deep knowledge and incredible power, they’re relatively changeless and given time, can do pretty much anything to which they set their minds.

More intriguing, to this little brain anyway, are the Dwarves. They’ve a reputation for being dour, humourless and grim, but as a culture, they’ve had reason. Driven from their ancestral halls, they are a people fallen from the heights of their civilisations in Moria and Erebor. Immensely talented in the creation of works of beauty and art, they are at once savage and unrelenting in war.

Perhaps the clearest portrait of their cultural essence is rendered by the song sung by Thorin and Company at Bag End before setting off on the quest for the Lonely Mountain. Imagine it chanted by thirteen deep voices in a fire-lit, smoky, low-ceilinged hall. . . .

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day
To win our harps and gold from him!

Wow. The thing fairly throbs with power and grim determination. Where’s my axe? My backpack? Off we go! Hm. Or not. Let’s calm down and take the song stanza by stanza.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

Dwarves live in unforgiving environments. Driven by a desire to work and craft stone, gems and precious minerals, they make their homes in steep, rocky, damp and chilly places. It’s no wonder that they moved underground. Still, they’ve made comfortable places for themselves; the “dungeons” must refer to the use of the word as the keep of a castle, wherein the inhabitants resided. Above-ground, this was often a stone tower. Dwarven dungeons were probably underground dwellings, carved out of the rock. That they didn’t merely move into natural caves is borne out by the song’s distinction between “dungeons” and “caverns.” The last line of the verse introduces us to a Dwarven passion. Gold glitters and flashes shallowly in torchlight and the Dwarves’ love of the metal is akin to a magical compulsion to seek it out.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

The Dwarves are an ancient people of many achievements and great works. They are often portrayed as being anti-magical or at the very least, shunning the use of magic in their craft. The “mighty spells” may give the lie to that characterisation, in that the Dwarves may be able to imbue their creations with magical attributes. Conversely, it may be a metaphor for the consummate skill which the Dwarves bring to their crafts, such that their works, while untouched by the supernatural, are of unparalleled quality, seemingly magical. The rest of this stanza is a truly ominous bit of foreshadowing, as the “Dwarvish racket” resonates in the ears of things unknown to the bearded folk, yet close by whom they have delved.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

We can take these two stanzas together, as they highlight the level of skill achieved by the Dwarves of old. Sought after by powerful Men and Elves, Dwarvish art in metalworking and gemsmithing must have far exceeded the capabilities of the other races. In their hands, cold metal and hard gems awoke to reflect back the light and wonders of the natural world.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

A circle back to the ancient homelands and a sign, with the “long-forgotten gold,” that the Dwarves have fallen away from the glories of their past, begin this stanza. The second of these verses harks back to the Dwarven skill of hand and makes the important point that no matter what “gleaming golden hoards” they delivered up to Men and Elves, the best of their creations they kept for themselves. More than artisans, tradesmen and merchants, the Dwarves developed and nurtured their own culture, keeping it fiercely secret from outsiders.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

The coming of the dragon; heralded in flame. The Dwarves’ creations caught and reflected back the beauty of the world. The dragon is a destroyer, a bringer of death to the world, covetous of that which, when its source of beauty is gone, is reduced to a hard pile of lifeless rock and metal.  The Dwarves are driven out from the safety of their “dungeons deep,” out into the harsh mountainsides where the dragon, where death, awaits.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day
To win our harps and gold from him!

Now for the last.  The Dwarves have suffered much.  They have fallen from their high places of old; their mountains are not just “cold,” but “grim” and their caverns, once ablaze with light, are danksome and dark.  The dragon rules a dead kingdom, but the Dwarves are determined not only to take back their treasure and works of their hands, but also their lost culture, to win back the respect of the outside world and the essence of their own place in it.

But I have never sat down and seriously worked my way into the storylines of any Marvel book.  It appears I should. There’s a whole realm of geekdom I’m missing out on.

Where do I start?  All I know is that I’m most interested in the X-men of all the teams and titles out there.  The Avengers seem a little stodgy and the Fantastic Four. . . . .well, dull.  I could be wrong.

There are millions of X-men titles and graphic novels/collections out there.  I’m not really interested in “collecting”, but in reading stories with good art, characters and plot.  Where should I begin this little quest into the unknown?  What are the best X-men books?

Incidentally, I’ve always been a small Batman fan too.  What belongs in the essential Batman library?

Townie Bastard, I’ve an odd feeling you might be able to help with this. . . . .

And then a small sign Katherine chanced to espy.

“Aha!” she exclaimed, a smile lighting her face,

“These glyphs finally did fall into place!”

“See-ay-are spells Car!”, she pronounced with a grin,

And wondered why her parents’ heads did suddenly spin.

My favourite character in all this crowd is the Yeoman.  He’s a servant of the Knight and is one of the fellowship who does not tell a tale. Here he is, from www.canterburytales.org:

So here’s a pretty complete picture of a tough, competent fellow.  He’s heavily armed, with sword, dagger, buckler, bow and arrows. He knows how to care for his equipment and he’s expert in his craft.  The very model, not of a modern Major-General, but of a trusty companion to a knight-errant.  With these few lines, Chaucer captured an icon of English folklore and history: the Archer.  Men like this stood at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, three battles of the Hundred Years’ War that infused the British conception of their place in history for centuries.  The notion of the common-born English longbowman defeating the steel-clad flower of French chivalry in a deadly arrow-storm stood all through English history as an integral part of the British national character.  See Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The White Company for details.

An equally fascinating cast of characters marches through the Tales.  Here’s another one, whom I have not read since I was admitted to the bar. . . . .the Man of Law:

It’s interesting to note that lawyers gathered as many flippant comments 600 years ago as they do today.  Seems somehow right and proper.

• carpenter
• knight
• dragon
• firefighter
• police officer
• truck driver
• master art thief
• master jewel thief
• mountain climber
• wilderness guide
• historian
• archaeologist
• archivist
• wizard
• commando
• foreign news correspondent
• journalist
• bowyer
• swordsmith
• photographer
• spy
• intrepid explorer
• diver
• wildlife biologist
• ninja
• space shuttle pilot
• regular airplane pilot
• helicopter pilot
• Jedi Knight
• toy tester
• race car driver
• highrise construction worker
• veterinarian
• musician
• magician
• escape artist
• writer
• librarian

Notice the complete absence of lawyers in there. I still think I’d have made a great dragon.

What did you want to be when you grew up? I asked Katherine that question today. She said, “Bigger.”

It seems that down on the Southern Shore of Newfoundland, in the Avalon Wilderness Area, a protected conservation region, there was a strain of the Canadian Lynx unique to the island; a distinct subspecies, as it were.  Like lynx everywhere they subsisted primarily on the snowshoe hare.

As with all things, the health of the lynx population was inextricably linked to that of the hare.  As the numbers of one rose and fell, so did the other.  Kind of like the fishery.  Some twenty years ago, however, when I was but a wee lad, a virulent fever of myxomatosis swept through the ranks of the snowshoe hares, leaving their numbers so low that the provincial biologists feared that their recovery would take years, if they recovered at all.

Of course, as the hares sickened and died in mid-wuffle, the lynxes started finding food scarcer and scarcer.  They too started dying, not of sickness, but starvation.  The population fell and fell and not the best efforts of conservationists province-wide could break the downward plunge.

At last, the Southern Shore lynxes were down to two females and one male.  Notoriously shy, like all their kind, they eluded capture, until, at last, weakened by chronic malnutrition and the endless, fruitless quest for sustenance, the male died.

Bereft of their Y-chromosome provider, it mattered not that hare population rebounded and the two remaining females lived out long and happy lives in a wilderness booming with game.  The future Newfoundland subspecies of Canadian lynx died with that male. . . . . . .

Thus proving the old adage that a strain is only as strong as its weakest lynx.

(Actually, the Newfoundland lynx is doing just fine, thanks for asking.)

There’s even a Bad Movie Night entry I’ve not finished.

Nonetheless, it seems as though the time has come, as the walrus said, to speak of the things which has been on my mind a lot lately.

The spy thriller – novel and film. It’s a genre rampant with bad writing, silly characters and throwaway books, but they occupy a large place on my shelf right next to the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels and I’ve devoted many a happy hour of pre-sleep dozeries to perusing the purple-prosed peregrinations of the PPK-pistol-packing set. Here’s a few of my favourites, in no order whatsoever.

Robert Ludlum’s written the helluvalotuv (sounds like a Molotov cocktail, doesn’t it?) material, some good, some indifferent and some ohholynightthat’sawful. Among my favourites are The Matarese Circle, in which American and Russian spies put aside their differences to go on an historical quest for the roots of an assassination/terrorist ring whose origins are rooted in a turn of the century Corsican madman. The sequel, The Matarese Countdown, is terrible. Also good is The Holcroft Covenant, about Nazi treasure, Israeli commandos and elusive assassins, with a architect protagonist. Apocalypse Watch is all about Nazis, neo- and otherwise, and the pummelling thereof.

His Bourne trilogy, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, recently made into films with Matt Damon as the title character represent the best and worst of Ludlum’s writing. Identity introduces us to a injured amnesiac, the source of whose violent skills and espionagical knowledge are as much a mystery to us as to him. Niftily, Ludlum takes us through to the redemption of Jason Bourne, while leaving enough of his past still a mystery to fill one more book. Supremacy is fascinating in that we get to see a different side of the character as he chases through Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China. Ludlum really should have stopped there. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and we get Ultimatum, a tiresome bore of a book in which the author drags us through well-plowed ground, stopping every once in a while to remind us that Bourne’s getting old.

The films are loosely based on the books, each one having less to do with its literary progenitor than the last. They’re fun though and worth a look-see, if only for some of the most well-choreographed fight scenes put to film. Watch though, for the moment when Bourne takes a cop’s baton away and beats him with it. The weapon woogles in a way that clearly shows it’s made of rubber!

Moving right along, let’s dive into Ken Follett. He’s a Brit with a talent for WWI and II spy stories, often set in Britain or North Africa. Best of the lot are Eye of the Needle, The Key to Rebecca, The Man from St. Petersburg, Triple and The Jackdaws. His writing is spare and direct, very simple, which in his better work is tight and gripping and in his worst, bland and irritating.

Staying with the stalwarts of Merrie England, here’s Frederick Forsyth. You need to be in the right frame of mind to read Forsyth. He’s extremely good at description and exposition, falling down a little in characterisation. His characters all seem just a hair shy of three-dimensional. That said, you will not be disappointed in his Cold War era novels of The Deceiver, The Fourth Protocol, The Devil’s Alternative and The Dogs of War. His masterpiece is The Day of the Jackal, a tale of an assassination attempt on French President General Charles de Gaulle. Watch the 1970s film version and then the Bruce Willis/Richard Gere adaptation.

Oh look!  Here’s David Morrell, a Canadian (!) who gave the world the unforgettable character of John Rambo. Yes, there was a book before Stallone got ahold of the films. I’ve never seen any of them, so I can’t comment. On the ascendant, however, are wonderfully crafted tales of spies, counterspies, assassins and religion, such as The Brotherhood of the Rose, The Fraternity of the Stone, and The Covenant of the Flame. Lesser, but still good, are The Protector, The League of Night and Fog and Extreme Denial. Of especial note is The Fifth Profession, whose story turns on the adventures of a couple of high-level professional bodyguards, one American and one Japanese.

Clive Cussler deserves a special mention. His millions of Dirk Pitt novels are all exactly the same. The characters never develop or even change at all from book to book and the writing is, at best pedestrian. His plots however, are so cheerfully outrageous that you can’t help but enjoy his stories. Whether it’s invading an Antarctic terrorist base in a 1920s polar-tractor-explorer just freed from 70 years of entombment in a glacier or raising the Titanic, Cussler always has an historical hook into Pitt’s adventures that keep me buying his books just to see could what possibly outdo the last one. Oddly enough, he usually succeeds.

Finally, there’s the great Ian Fleming. The man who created James Bond wrote a delightfully tough-as-nails, macho hero who rarely lost his cool, even under the most trying of circumstances. Products of their times, 007′s adventures nonetheless are as entertaining as anything written in the last 40 years. My personal favourites are From Russia with Love, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Moonraker.

Well there you have it. Spies, lies and private eyes. Anybody got any other recommendations? I’m always looking for something new. . . .

King Arthur and Excalibur

Roland and Durendal

Charlemagne and Joyeuse

Sigurd/Siegfried and Gram/Balmung

Aragorn and Anduril

Eomer and Guthwine

Theoden and Herugrim

Elendil and Narsil

Fingolfin and Ringil

Turin and Gurthang

Bilbo and Sting

Frodo and Sting

Itto Ogami and Dotanuki

The Gray Mouser and Scalpel & Cat’s Claw

Fafhrd and Graywand & Heartseeker

Drizzt and Twinkle & Icingdeath

Harimad and Gonturan

Aerin and Gonturan

Gwydion and Drynwyn

Elric and Stormbringer

Tanis Half-Elven and Wrymslayer

There. That’s not half bad for off the top of my head. Now here’s the challenge – how many of the sources for these characters can you name?