Mercedes Lackey

[Kappa]

Moved from the Canons List.

Also, regarding the antirecommendation of the Obsidian/Enduring Flame trilogies: If you like Mercedes Lackey, they are pretty damn good Mercedes Lackey. If you don't like Mercedes Lackey, they are like unto a literary form of torture. Alicorn falls into the latter category; I'm closer to the former. If you don't know if you like Mercedes Lackey, it probably isn't worth reading the books to find out.

[Bluelantern]

I am not strongly inclined to find out, but what would be a safer Mercedes Lackey story? (I must say that Thilanushinyel did not impress me at all)

[PlainDealingVillain]

For a Lackey introduction, I'd recommend her Elemental Masters or Hundred Kingdoms series; they're all standalone novels, mostly retellings of fairy tales in the two settings. Elemental Masters are in an early-1900s England (well, mostly England) where there are people who have the natural ability to do classical-elements magic; Hundred Kingdoms are set in a traditional fairy-tale world, except that a magical force called The Tradition both supplies all magical power and tries to force events down the various story-paths of fairy tales.

I also consider them better-written than the Valdemar series, which is what she's better known for.

[Kappa]

The weird thing about the Elemental Masters series is that after reading a few of them in close succession, I start to get the strong feeling that they were written from the standpoint of, "What is the best way I can turn all of these fairy tales into the exact same romance storyline over and over again?"

But yeah, better written than the Valdemar series. Not that that's such a high bar to clear. (I like Mercedes Lackey, but mostly for nostalgia reasons; she is not really a great writer.)

[PlainDealingVillain]

Yeah, that's a fair description. She's certainly not bad, but not great by anyone's standard.

[Alicorn]

I've split this topic as it's not really germane to the Canons List in this quantity.

[Kappa]

And now I've cross-linked everything.

[Anya]

I liked the first Thousand Kingdoms book, but when I tried to read it's sequal I kind of noped and left a pretty bad review on goodreads. *shrug*

[PlainDealingVillain]

Side note: Both I and Anya misremembered the name, it's the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series.

[Anya]

Ooooooh. Lmfao. I haven't read that and am apparently thinking of a totally different series/author.

I'm a dope.