Changes by Mercedes Lackey

A Spoiler-Free Review

Changes definitely lives up to that title. There's the change in Mags' training, everyone's relationships, and the group of antagonists everyone is dealing with. Changes is jam packed, to say the least, but also quite good.

Kirball actually plays a big role here, or at least a bigger role than I thought it was ever going to play. We get a blow-by-blow game right at the beginning, which sets us up to follow a much more truncated game later in the book. We're also able to see, through this, how Mags comes to trust Gennie's coordination of both Mind-Speakers and non-Gifted. Gennie's involvement here is helpful later with the... well, it's not actually given a name at any point here, so I'm just gonna call it the Web-Stone as well as during the attempted kidnapping of Amily and Mags.

Mags' training ramps up during Changes in such a way that I really questioned Nikolas telling Mags at the end of Intrigues to just be a normal Trainee for a bit. Mags' formal education is shuffled around to compensate for some on-the-job training. I'm actually surprised at the amount of customization that was allowed for... the Collegium's curriculum and teaching style is a mystery to me. It's still obviously in a state of flux between the direct apprentice system they had before and the more classroom focused system they're having to move to. Mags basically being able to run around for Nikolas all night and have all his summer classes moved to the afternoon still strikes me as odd, but so does the year-round schedule of classes the Collegium has opted for. American school systems have the summer break and winter and spring breaks, where the Collegium seems to just have the winter break. It's odd.

But anyway, Mags gets to see how Nikolas operates outside of the Palace and Collegium. He gets to experience Valdemar's version of CSI at work. I thought it was interesting that there was such a thing and that they were so flexible working with Mags hanging around. Makes quite the change from how Vanyel dealt with his crime scene in Magic's Promise. All this stuff then leads to Mags having to operate in a moral grey area concerning the foreign agents' little informants which then leads to a frank conversation with Dallen about the whys and whens of Mags' being Chosen. I liked that we got that because it's really not often apparent why certain Heralds are Chosen. Also makes me look a little askance at Nikolas being Chosen as King's Own as opposed to, ya know, not. But that might just be me.

Relationships get a little bit of a shake-up here. We see next to nothing of Mags' non-Collegium friends and get a big focus on Bear, Lena, and Amily. Bear and Lena deal with their individual family issues while at the same time starting to deal with their burgeoning relationship. Amily gets a big focus due to her importance to the plot, Nikolas, and Mags. I really hope, though, that all that drama is fully dealt with for now. There's only so much repeat business I can take of relationship drama.

I mentioned the Web Stone earlier. This is the focus stone Vanyel used to create the Web of Heralds. I find it so odd that so many important things like the Web Stone have just been straight up forgotten between the events of Magic's Price and the Collegium Chronicles. I'll give the Web Stone a bit of a pass due to how secluded it is and how little I think anyone outside of Vanyel's little coven actually knew about it. But absolutely no one catching on to the existence of Mages or magic despite how important Herald Mages used to be and I assume had songs written about them. Perhaps Stefan did his job raising regular Heralds up a little too well. I don't know. Just seems really odd to me that something that important would just be straight relegated to myth as fast as it was... much shrugging.

The last thing I want to talk about is Mags' speech patterns. I guess it was kind of cute at first, to have his actual speech patterns written out as he would actually speak. However, three books in, it's gotten more annoying than not. Especially as he demonstrates to Dallen that he can speak properly when he chooses to. This passage in particular: " ’Idin’ ’er ’ere i’ th’ Palace, " took me three tries to read and comprehend, which I only did at last because I gave up and went on to the rest of the sentence after it. I'm pretty sure most authors at this point just mention someone having a particular accent and readers just adapt to that. Mags' speech just shows that there's a fine line between visible accent and incomprehensibility.

Oh! I lied. I also want to touch on Bear and his whole thing with Amily's leg. I think it's really interesting that we're still in this pseudo-renaissance-y setting and getting into reconstructive surgery. I liked the way Mags coaxed Bear to accept some outside help. I teared up a little bit during the impromptu brainstorming session in the Collegium cafeteria. I thought that entire thing was really well done.

Changes was ultimately a lot of fun. There was a lot to unpack in terms of both character and world-building. I'm very much looking forward to Redoubt and perhaps finding out why Mags was wanted by "The Agents." Mags is obviously the center of things at this point and I hope we find out why soon.