The Mage Wars Series Overview

The Mage Wars by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

Contains Spoilers for the series

I am of the opinion that The Mage Wars is a very misleading title for this trilogy. Literally the "Mage War" in question is happening/ends in the very first book and everything after that is, well, after that. There is a mage antagonist in The White Gryphon, but he's barely there. So yeah, very misleading series title. I don't really have a much better title in mind, though, so what do I know?

The series itself is alright. Not the best trilogy I've ever read, but readable enough. Each of the books takes place at slightly different parts in the timeline, basically a years apart, and in different places around Valdemar before Valdemar itself, the country, exists. The characters are largely the same throughout, although The Silver Gryphon focuses more on Tad and Blade (Skan and Drake's children) as opposed to Skan and Drake themselves.

The Black Gryphon did not spend a lot of time in the war aspects. We got a few gryphon missions, but otherwise most of the time was spent in Urtho's war camp. There was a lot of character work, mostly focused on Amberdrake and Skandranon with a little bit of Zhaneel and Winterhart. We got a lot of gryphon and hertasi description, but very little on any of the other species that Urtho apparently made or imparted intelligence on. I did enjoy The Black Gryphon, but it was definitely less than action packed. Also, Kechara is a sweetie who I really wish we'd gotten more of outside of her plot relevance.

I was incredibly frustrated during The White Gryphon. It was fun getting an entirely different society (the Haighlei), but the way that society was structured was mostly frustrating. I found it increasingly ridiculous that the inhabitants of White Gryphon were not apprised of all of their rights and such under Haighlei laws, especially while under suspicion for murder. The fact that this was apparently not done because King Shalaman wanted Winterhart as his Forever Wife or whatever made things even more frustrating... I spent a lot of time just wanting to be done with it. In addition to this, Skandranon apparently forgot he wasn't actually any kind of Ruler among his people and that was just a helpful fiction they created to deal with the Haighlei. Just so, so frustrating. Add to all that the absolutely despicable villain of Hadanelith... ho boy. I was almost immediately just done with him but couldn't get away due to how prevalent he was in the whole book.

The Silver Gryphon was definitely a breath of fresh air after the gigantic ball of frustration that was The White Gryphon. I really enjoyed Tadrith and Silverblade as characters. They meshed well as a team and I'm just really glad we had their pair rather than just one of them. In my review, I likened The Silver Gryphon to Hatchet by Gary Paulsen and it really was quite similar in regards to the figuring out how to survive in the wilderness arena. I definitely think the pair of protagonists helped to keep things interesting, as well as the antagonist wyrsa. Speaking of the wyrsa, I think they're kind of interesting as antagonists. Kind of wish they'd been more than just magic doggos, but they did serve as tension for the good portion of the book. I would like to know exactly how they "inspected and sorted" through Tad and Blade's stuff with just dog anatomy... but yeah. I guess that just goes to show how ultimately underdeveloped they were.

Overall, I think The Mage Wars wasn't very cohesive as a trilogy. It was really only a trilogy in that the characters carried over and the timeline carried through. Each of the books could technically be read as a standalone novel. There's enough explanation in the latter two that, yes, connects them, but also just feeds you the information relevant to the particular story.

I'm fairly certain that, if I were to do another Valdemar reread in the future, I just might skip this trilogy altogether. I don't really remember The Mage Wars as having much, if any bearing on the rest of the Valdemar series, which makes sense The Black Gryphon wasn't published until six years after Arrows of the Queen and the trilogy is set way before Valdemar is even founded. Really just feels like Lackey and Dixon wanted to set up other societies and critters existing in the Valdemar world (apparently called Velgarth, which is something I learned via the Valdemar Fandom Wiki) and kind of explain how things like Mage Storms started happening.

On the subject of "critters," the only ones that really have any bearing on the story are the gryphons, hertasi, and wyrsa. We get mentions of kyree, tervadi, and dyheli as non-human races but little to no explanation as to what these races actually look like or how they behave. I had to google them -- the dyheli a couple of times because I just plain forgot -- to figure out what they were and looked like. I also still want an actual explanation as to what the maakar look like, even if they are extinct after The Black Gryphon. I guess all this serves to fill out the world, but I honestly forgot most of these guys existed outside of the odd mentions of them.

On a separate note, I read The Mage Wars on via the Kindle app. The Mage Wars contains portraits, I guess you'd call them, of the main characters as well as things like the wyrsa. I highly recommend looking up these portraits online if you are reading via Kindle because the scans of them that appear in the Kindle version are pretty shit. It was like looking at a copy of a copy of a copy. Not cool.

The Mage Wars was a fairly good read, my frustrations with The White Gryphon aside. If you're a completionist like me, I'd definitely say go ahead and give it a read. If not... meh. I honestly don't think there's much missing from the overall Valdemar story without this trilogy. I guess we'll see as I continue my read through.

In Other News

I have finished another OviPets project. This one is as close as I could get to the Digimon Huanglongmon. Part of my Mega Digimon project line.

The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon

Technically a Reread Review

So, The Black Gryphon and I have a bit of history. When I last did a Valdemar read through, The Black Gryphon ended up in my DNF pile after maybe a page. I’d somehow got it in my head that gryphons did not talk and I basically didn’t want to read a book narrated by a gryphon. This was after I’d been reading the various Heralds books and… yeah… not entirely sure about my mindset then, but I definitely finished The Black Gryphon this time.

The Black Gryphon is not what I would call a typical starting book. The reader is not treated as though this is their first foray into the world of Valdemar. Terms are just thrown out there and the reader is expected to keep up. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, just an interesting choice for a book that’s at least starting a trilogy. Some terms are later explained in depth, but I was flailing some initially. On this read, I was very happy to have the internet at my fingertips so I could look up what various terms meant and creature descriptions/images. I will, however, forever envision Hertasi as Randall from Monsters Inc. despite seeing images that have them looking much more aligator-like in the snout and coloring. Fight me.

Anyway, a good portion of The Black Gryphon is vignettes of war camp life. The camp is far enough from the front lines that not a lot actually happens. There is more character building than actual plot. The plot really kicks in during the last quarter of the book. Not a bad plot, though I am somewhat interested to see what happens with Ma’ar.

There’s a point in the book where Amberdrake has to explain two a pair of young healers what a kestra’chern is and actually does. This is done twice back-to-back. I found that really annoying. Honestly, that’s not the only point where the narration switches from not explaining to perhaps over explaining. It didn’t completely break me out of the story, but I did notice it.

There's a fair bit of parental philosophy thrown in here. Like, way more than I would normally expect, as none of the main characters have children. I mean, it's kind of spinning off stuff Urtho, creator of a bunch of magical critters, wrote, so it kind of makes sense. I was surprised. It's also not bad parenting philosophy either. Honestly, I agree with Urtho's assessment of human parents just being able to have kids all willy-nilly as a bad thing. It's part of why I support sex education and better access to contraceptives and, yes, abortion.

I would have liked an actual description of the makaar. Even googling them didn’t bring up much. I imagine they’re gryphon-like, but… ya know, would be nice to actually know.

So yeah, I actually made it through The Black Gryphon this time. It was alright. Very character driven. Not the best of the Valdemar series overall, but, ya know, not the worst.

Technically Spoilers Now

I said earlier that I was interested in what happened to Ma'ar, but I have since started The White Gryphon and... dude's dead, apparently. Go figure. I guess this is what happens when a series is essentially written to fill in backstory, like this one was. I mean, in hindsight (aka, after doing a tiny bit of research) The Black Gryphon really does read like a bunch of characters created in order to fill in the history of Valdemar a bit. And, ya know, the maakar exist here, but pretty much die out because Ma'ar died... for example. Nothing super in depth, just, like, how'd we get The Cataclysm and such... which I barely remember from my first Valdemar read through, to be honest. I dunno, just a thing I am now realizing as I start the next book.