Arrow's Fall by Mercedes Lackey

So, Arrow’s Fall was kind of a mixed bag for me. Some of it I found extremely frustrating and parts were very good, if anxiety inducing. I feel it was a satisfying “ending” to Talia’s tale. I say it like that, because she does survive and goes on to fulfill her Queen’s Own duties. But yeah, this review will make it abundantly clear how I felt about certain parts.

Kris really should have known to make it crystal fucking clear to Dirk that he and Talia weren’t a thing. Kris should have explained that they were just friends, instead of leaving Dirk to wonder. But noooo, Kris is too damn pleased with how Dirk’s acting in Talia’s direction, he didn’t even think to make it crystal clear to Dirk. I really, really hate these kinds of plot points. Love triangles annoy me to no end. It’s not even a proper love triangle, as Kris and Talia already had their relationship worked out… it’s just Dirk and Talia both refusing to actually talk to each other. And yes, I said both. Talia could have said something but instead she was waiting on Dirk to make a move he clearly wasn’t going to. I’m just so annoyed about this entire thing.

Finally, this is where Lord Orthallan comes to the fore in all his manipulative glory. Figures that he’d be in it for the crown he literally cannot have without outside help. Le sigh, so annoying. It’s really no surprise he’s been attempting to undermine Heralds and failing miserably. I’m not sure I suspected him of being behind everything it turned out he was behind, but as I did suspect him of a lot… I dunno, I call that a win for me.

Here we see a fine example of non-Valdemarans, and non-Heralds as I assume Lord Orthallan doesn’t actually believe Companions are what they are, not really understanding what a Companion is and therefore completely discounting them. Hulda has no clue Talia appearing without Rolan wouldn’t do anything to help her plan. No one in Hardorn knows Rolan was sent with Talia’s message or even thought to try and detain him… not that they could. Hulda’s original plan for Elspeth would have failed completely anyway, if Elspeth wasn’t ever Chosen and she just gives no shits about that and probably didn’t think it would be an issue. It’s just really interesting to me that no one outside Valdemar and the Heraldic Circle thinks about the Companions as important outside of being mounts for Heralds.

It’s also hilarious to me that Hulda is given to monologuing. She doesn’t even stop despite Talia calling her out on it. Ancar’s just a gross, sadistic human. Not even that interesting. “I consider myself an artist” please. He and Hulda together are just horrific. I hate them so, so much.

Dirk and Elspeth’s rescue attempt had me in tears. Rolan and the Companions coming to help made it worse.

The way Rolan addresses Dirk is odd, like he can’t just say Dirk’s name or originally didn’t bother to learn any of the Heralds’ names. Just weird. None of the other Companions seem to have issues talking about other Heralds by name, even if they don’t talk to them.

So yeah, Arrow’s Fall, a fitting end to the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy. I largely enjoyed it, even though it was also highly frustrating.

Favorite Line

"What is it," Talia asked the ceiling above her head, "what is it about would-be tyrants that makes them speak and posture like a third-rate gleeman in a badly-written play?"

Arrow's Flight by Mercedes Lackey

Arrow’s Flight is honestly the first true look we’ve gotten as to what Heralds get up to on a daily basis. The regular ones, anyway. That makes sense as it’s part of the first Heralds of Valdemar series and what I’ve been reading up til now (Chronologically) just wasn’t meant to be a primer or Heralds and what they do. Not that there isn’t plenty of that, but Arrow’s Flight really drives all that home and very well.

I love the Prologue. Glad it wasn’t a first intro to Valdemar, but it’s a pretty cool intro and recap rolled into one.

I said in my last review that Lord Orthallen was one of the conspirators… apparently I was wrong. The man is rather prominent, though. Aaand sowing seeds of doubt about Talia and her Empathy… even if he says he’s maintained he’s not the one sowing those seeds. I’m definitely with Talia is being extremely wary of him, as I have been since his first chronological appearance.

I did not remember the thing about the arrows. Still probably won’t remember it… It makes sense in the context of not all Heralds having Gifts and apparently not even able to talk to their Companions the way everyone up until Talia has been able to… at least that I’ve read. However, as we’re not drilled as much as the characters about it, it probably won’t stick in my brain at all.

A good chunk of this book has me screaming at the characters to fucking talk to each other. They keep wanting to and then not doing it, which is CLEARLY just making things worse. Ugh. That even Rolan won’t talk about it is so stupid. Like, I know he can’t speak directly to Talia, but Kris and Tantris can act as go-betweens for that. Just uuuugghhhh. Add to that the misunderstanding Talia and Kris end up having about their relationship… just much groaning and eye rolling on my part. I hate when people who should talk to each other just don’t for whatever reason.

I liked getting to see some actual Gift training. It’s all well and good to be told this stuff, but it’s another thing to be seeing it through the eyes of the characters. I feel like the last book was more of the former. I like that it turns out Talia wasn’t just automatically able to perfectly control her Gift. Makes her less of a Mary Sue character. I am not so fond of everyone and their mother being afraid of her because of the rumors about her Gift, but I suppose the adversity helped?

I did ultimately enjoy Arrow’s Flight. I feel like we got a better understanding of Valdemar as a realm, rather than just the stuff at the Capital. I also quite enjoyed getting more of Talia’s grown up character, as opposed to her unfinished version. Arrow’s Flight is solid and I’m looking forward to the next part of Talia’s story. 

Favorite Lines

"Oh, huzzah, I'm a marvel of coordination. I can kill anything on two legs. That's a terrific qualification for being Heir." - Elspeth

"In that case, I can assume it's safe to come to bed?"

     "I wouldn't murder you there, anyway," she replied with a hint of her old sense of humor. "It would get the blankets all sticky." - Kris and Talia

Smoulder by Laurell K. Hamilton

I am a long time Anita Blake fan. I’ve read all the books to date — most of them at least twice — and even a couple of the graphic novels just for funsies. I devoured Smoulder in three days. Would have been two, but I had to work. Honestly, Smoulder feels super unfinished. I want to say there are two major plot lines introduced in Smoulder that just don’t come to any sort of conclusion and the third, continuing plot line that kind of does. It’s felt very odd when Smoulder just sort of petered off when it did. The book wasn’t bad, but the ending was definitely a… uh… I don’t know how to describe it in a single word. I felt like I had whip-lash from the ending, because I was expecting more.

So, the first story line that I felt should have had an ending was the Sunshine Murder thing. Usually, Anita gets called in to help with a case and that’s the over-arching plot of the book. But not so here. Anita gets called in to consult and then… nothing. Dolph sidelines her from the case and apparently McKinnon’s magic do-hickey means nothing in the long-run of Smoulder. Okay… but fine.

Second story line: the while Deimos thing. Anita and the gang are attacked and barely get out with the power they currently have. We spend much of the rest of the book theorizing on how to take out Deimos. And then… nothing. No second attack, no actually going after Deimos, just prep work. Uh… what? This one feels like it got stopped right in the middle. It’s the story line I’m really annoyed pretty much goes nowhere.

The continuing story line of Anita’s love life keeps getting on. We get Richard back in the mix and Asher’s nonsense continues. Another part of this kind of concludes because of the Deimos story line, but, as usual, there are more issue to work out. I’m happier with this bit, but… ugh. Just… everyone talks like they’ve got a partial psychology degree and they explain things to the point of smacking the reader over the head with them. Also, all this talking really killed the pacing for me. Aaand everyone goes to sleep all of a sudden with no food? That was kind of a large part of the focus that go forgotten, I guess.

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from Smoulder but this wasn’t it. I definitely expected more story and it just cut off. Adding a Sneak Peak at Slay didn’t endear the abrupt ending to me either. I didn’t read it, to be totally honest. I really expect more out of the Anita Blake novels.

Favorite Line

"Yeah, existential dread and the search for identity is a bummer." - Anita Blake

Character Spotlight: Rodina

There are spoilers in this section. You've been warned.

I really feel like I should talk some about Rodina because she's a big part of this book. So first, I will probably never get it through my thick skull that she's a wereleopard. With a name like "Rodina" my brain will always think "rat." But that's whatever. Rodina is fairly new to the Anita Blake universe, at least as far as readers are concerned. She's also understandably having an existential crisis during Smoulder on top of grieving for her brother Rodrigo -- she has been ripped from her previous life and it is their birthday. Although I've complained a little about how everyone in this series talks like a therapy ad, I really hope Rodina actually ends up working on herself through the therapy she's agreed to go to with her other brother, Ru. I feel like she'd be a really fun character once her spitefulness is worked out.

Remembering The Sickness by K.A. Applegate

This post is going to be starting off a new review series, separate from my main series of reviews. These will be just as lazy -- probably lazier, even -- as my usual reviews. According to the data I've put into GoodReads, I've currently got a "Read" count of 945 books. I've only officially reviewed a very small sampling of those and really don't intend on going back and rereading all of them in order to properly review them. So, while I was spraying down meat saws at work, I had this idea to do a series of reviews based solely on what I remember of a random assortment of books and possibly the blurbs. I thought I might also do this style of post for what I'm about to read, just to see how much I remember vs what my rereads turn up. But yeah, mostly these "Remembering" posts will be for books I have little to no intention of rereading. They'll also have no particular order, just what I happen to have my mind on at any given moment. The format will also be open to change at any given moment. I haven't settled on what exactly I want to do with these yet so... yeah. There will be spoilers.

Enjoy.

The Sickness by K.A. Applegate

I was a huge fan of Animorphs when I was in Junior High. Like, HUGE. I am embarrassed  to say that I created a weird form of "Tag" based around the series. That's how big I was into it. I read all 54 books and the surrounding "Mega Morphs" and "Chronicles" extras. I even watched a few episodes of the Nickelodeon TV show when I had access. It seemed fitting to start off this new series of reviews with an Animorphs book, specifically my favorite one: The Sickness. Book number 29.

Every Animorphs book follows a different member of the protagonist group, in this case, Cassie.

I have no idea how The Sickness starts out, only that the Animorphs are on one of their self-assigned missions and Jake, I believe, starts getting sick. Like, throwing up and not being able to stay in his animal forms. I distinctly remember the throwing up bit, because there's a whole part where Cassie and Marco are walking Jake home and Marco starts riffing on all the different names for puking. My adolescent brain loved that bit. Anyway, one by one, each of the Animorphs except Cassie falls prey to whatever this sickness is. There's something about it being passed through the morphing ability, but it's all kind of vague and I'm pretty sure we never find out why Cassie doesn't end up sick.

However, we do find out that Ax, the sole alien of the group, has some brain-swelling or something as a side effect of the sickness and Cassie, as the proto-vet or whatever, has to do some surgery in order to relieve the swelling. This needs to involve a Yeerk for some reason, but to get ahold of one of those, you gotta get to the Yeerk-pool... and that's as much as I remember about that particular plot point until:

Over the course of the book, Cassie also has to befriend a Yeerk (the brain-invading slug-like parasites the Animorphs are fighting the entire series). Or, befriend isn't exactly the word as Cassie makes a deal with this "girl" to basically get herself stuck in an utterly useless morph in return for the Yeerk's help. Cassie does this, I remember, but it's ultimately okay because of a weird quirk in the morphing tech that allows metamorphosed morphs to restart the morphing clock. So apparently a caterpillar turning itself to goo and then becoming a butterfly restarts Cassie's morphing clock and she's back to being a human in the end. Which... ya know, I'm glad I didn't know more about the butterfly life-cycle at the time, because I call shenanigans about that 2-hour-and-you're-stuck clock in that case... but I also don't know how long that whole process actually takes and now I have questions.

But whatever, Cassie does Ax's surgery with the help of the Yeerk "girl," the rest of the Animorphs basically get over the sickness, and everyone comes out all hunky-dory at the end of the book. I think the Yeerk "girl" also lets her host go and gains morphing abilities of her own... and purposefully gets herself stuck as something else, but I could be completely misremembering that. 54+ books of memories, I'm bound to get things mixed up.

I probably reread The Sickness at least five times as a kid. It's probably why I remember so much about it. The Animorphs books were below my reading level even when I was reading them the first time and they're kind of short. I tore through them pretty quickly multiple times. A good chunk of that series is a big blur in my head. That's also fairly understandable as Animorphs is one of those formulaic series mostly written by ghost writers. That said, I highly recommend Animorphs as a series for kids interested in sci-fi but not super sure if they're going to like it or not and animal lovers. Animorphs is more heavy on the animal facts than it is the actual science fiction aspects, from what I remember anyway.