Rating: 
Summary: Lackey fills in more gaps in the her great series
Review: Lackey writes a great story which talks about the weaponsmaster Alberich and his history leading up to the other books in this great series. Every time I see a new lackey book dealing with Valdemar I buy it. Alberich is not a weak person in this book despite what some people have said. He lets her deal with her own problems. He protects her by going under cover to find out what might harm his Queen. Lackey makes great connections to what is only referred as history in her other books. I hope she keeps on writing more Valdemar books because I know I will keep on buying them.
Rating:
Summary: Once again, a Mercedes that lacks nothing
Review: Once he was a loyal soldier in the Karsian army. Through an unusual set of circumstances he was chosen to be the Companion of Kantor, a magical being that looks like a hors but is so much more. Alberich had to prove to the Heralds of Valdemar that he was worthy of joining them. He accomplishes that during the Tedral War. Now with Tedral defeated and Karse involved with its internal problems, Valdemar is temporarily at peace.King Sendar has been dead for six months and his daughter Queen Selenay rules the country. The council is urging her to marry and begat an heir but none of their choices motivates her to get married. Alone and lonely, with only her companion to confide in, she falls for Prince Karath of Rethwellian when he comes to pay a condolence call. None of the Heralds trust him; Alberich has reason to believe he is a traitor but all he and his allies can do is wait until the prince consort makes a move. They must also protest the queen without her knowing that they suspect her husband is planning something dreadful once their child is born. Anytime a Valdemar book is published it is a cause for celebration and EXILE'S VALOR, the sequel to Exile's Honor, is no exception. The novel focuses on the first year of the queen's reign and how her master Herald Alberich, who is also her spy master watches over her and makes sure she is always protected even when she is unaware of the danger. Mercedes Lackey makes Valdemar seem so real that readers will believe it actually exists. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Mary Sue? Is That You?
Review: OVERALL CONCLUSION: Not at all a bad book as Lackey's volumes go, but with structural problems and some minor errors of real-world fact.[1] Worth buying if you're already a fan, but i'd recommend, say, "Arrows of the Queen" or "By the Sword" as a first experience with Lackey's work. REVIEW: There are a number of problems in writing a long series of books set in a common history but out of order -- and one of the biggest is that you may find yourself handcuffed by something that seemed like a good idea when you mentioned it in passing twenty-odd (some of them very odd) years ago. In the intervening time, unfortunately, your own perception of your setting and characters may have changed significantly, or you may find youself stuck with having to actually wrie events that you merely alluded to in the earlier work. In this book, Lackey finds herself stuck with having to relate the story of unfortunate (to say the least) events in the early life of Queen Selenay of Valdemar, alluded to way back in her first book, "Arrows of the Queen" and in later books in the series. While she was merely alluding to these events, and summarising some aspects of them to set up plots in other books, all was well. Now she has to actually *write* about it, and convince the reader that a very smart person -- no matter how young and emotionally traumatised -- could be so deceived and taken in by an out-and-out phony who is a tool of a plot to sieze power; the problem here is that, for me and others with whom i have discussed the book, she simply doesn't make it. Even ten or so years younger, the Selenay presented here is just not the Selenay of the earlier books. That's a problem. A not-quite-a-problem but nonetheless a bit jarring, is alluded to in this review's title -- "Mary Sue" is a term coined originally in "Star Trek" fandom to describe a fan fiction story in which a shy, unassuming minor character -- who just happens to closely resemble the author -- is the Only One Who Can Save The Day, and in the process, earns the undying gratitude (if not love) of The Dashing Captain (or perhaps The Vulcan Science Officer). Lo and be held, in this book we have the reappearance of Herald-Chronicler Myste, who, it turns out, takes an interest in Weaponsmaster Herald Alberich that goes beyond their work together. "Myste"? Hmmm.[2] That said, the teamwork of Alberich and Myste, and their quite plausible gradual discovery and thwarting of a Heinous Plot against Valdemar itself, is the primary focus of the book, and is well-enough told that i feel justified in awarding the three stars that i have, as opposed to the one or two that the "plot against Selenay" and "Mary Sue"-ish elements ought to rate. (A possible name coincidence i like is that an actor who specialises in athletic roles in which he uses extravagant and mostly-bogus fighting styles is named "Norris"...) ====================================================
[1]The story begins with the punishment of a couple of students who break an incredibly-expensive full length mirror in the salle who are sent to pump bellows and so on for some months at the glassmakers' guild's main manufactory until the replacement mirror canbe made. In the course of setting this up, the Master Glassmaker repeats the widely-held belief that glass slowly flows and that older panes of glass are thicker at the bottom than at the top because of this. That just isn't trus -- a quick websearch led me to the page http://www.glassnotes.com/WindowPanes.html, which thoroughly debunks this myth -- and also, in a quick mention, leads me to the second "everybody knows" about glass that Lackey mentions: That cheap "bullseye" glass panes (thicker in the center than at the edges, distorting anything seen through them), used in windows in poorer dwellings or taverns, are made in a mold. Well, this may well be true for reproduction bullseye panes made nowadays -- but, if you were makng glass for windows in a mold, wouldn't you try to have it of more or less uniform thickness, without circular ridges that distort vision? In fact, bullseye panes were/are made by spinning a glob of molten glass to cause it to flatten out in a disc shape (thus explaining the extra-thick center and the circular patterning around it), a technique discovered by the Romans about 100AD, as detailed at http://www.3k1.co.uk/ngc/general/indexworldhistory.htm. [2]At least they aren't lifemates yet; Lackey [as also Miller and Lee in their "Liaden" stories (q.v.)] is fond of telling us how rare true lifemate bondings are, but it seems as if, in her writings, all it takes is for two characters of romantically-compatible gender to shake hands and they're lifemated...
Rating:
Summary: Lots of unconnected details
Review: Some may accuse me of being picky, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I'd hoped. I've been a longtime reader of the Valdemar books, but this book was sloppy and there was insufficient attention paid to the essential themes of the book. Alberich and Selenay have virtually no interaction, despite the close relationship they built in Exile's Honor. This seems at odds with the way they had worked together in the past-- that Selenary looked to Alberich for advice and trusted him as someone to confide in-- and yet here, she is never seen to interact with him, and he never does anything to address his own concerns about her situation with her. I'd have thought that Alberich would be more interested in protecting Selenay by having straight talks with her about what needed to be done, but in EV, he backs off of any interaction with her, and develops a discomfort with women that is cited as the reason why he doesn't tell Selenay his concerns. He comes across as a weaker person for all that. Selenay, for the purposes of continuity with the stories later on, where she admits to being infatuated with her prince and making a bad decision in marrying him, nonetheless comes across as more of a whiner than I think was intentional. It's one thing to mourn your lost father and want romance like any other girl, but Selenay turns into a mopey, whiny, self-absorbed git which bears no relationship (or any point of departure) from the self-possessed and likable young Heir in Exile's Honor. There are a lot of distracting elements to the story which are built up as if the character is going to be of great import, and which draw away from the main thrust of the story. Sure, it's nice that there's a Tedrel orphan/heraldic trainee who idolizes Alberich, but the deviation adds nothing to the story. We already know Alberich knows how to be nice to scared little kids, from Talia's interactions with him later on. There are several subplots and story elements in the story like this, which make the overall narrative disconnected and distracting. Likewise, much as it's nice that (SPOILER) Alberich has a potential love interest, the scenes are awkwardly written and not believable in terms of the way that Alberich reacts in those situations. He's not Don Juan, and I don't think any Lackey fan expects him to be, but he's portrayed as more awkward than he should be, and it detracts from his character. Given Lackey's penchant for bringing characters and themes back in other stories, this all _might_ have had a point if she hadn't already written the books in which none of these side characters or issues play any role whatsoever, but since she's pretty much "filled" the stories of Selenay's reign in already, all the extra characters distract from the flow of the book, and contribute to the impression that this was something that Lackey pushed out the door without sufficient editing. And many of the resolutions are too pat, with not enough build-up-- we're told something might happen, then the focus shifts to another story line, and then all of a sudden the suspicious thing occurs, without any real denoument or climax. Not one of the worst Lackey books, but not up to the quality of some of the other books in the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Worst. Ever. But not without parts worth reading.
Review: This is the worst Valdemar book I have ever read (though some of Lackey's earlier, pre-Valdemar works and This Sceptr'd Isle were worse than this one). Others have pointed out the massive continuity errors, so I'll pass them by. If you've never read a Lackey book and this is one you pick up, you might not hate it, because you don't know how it ends. Maybe there's some suspense for you. The history outlined in other books means that nothing terribly interesting could plausibly happen during Selenay's reign, which is probably why we are regaled with endless descriptions of the ice festival (originally snow festival, a minor error), hurlee (hockey plus lacrosse plus polo equals SHUT UP, I DON'T CARE), glass-blowing, etc. None of those descriptions would be out of line if they moved the story forward or enhanced it in some way, but each segment seems dropped in at random. Hurlee could have been excused if it were truly relevant to one of the characters' experiences -- I'm pretty sure the author was inspired by quidditch, but alas, the age of the average audience and the fact that none of the characters we care about care about the game made Hurlee an unwelcome guest in the book. The commentary on sportsmen-as-warriors came out of some beginning textbook on the sociology of sport and were chucked in wherever there was space, as opposed to when needed. I like learning about everyday life, but not because there's no story to tell. Lackey's usually decent process of building tension and suspense always required the willing cooperation of the reader, but here those attempts are dashed by inexpert, lazy cutting between Alberich's and Selenay's accounts. The fact that long-time readers know exactly who the bad guys are doesn't help. Story-wise this book is a drastic failure. "Mary Sue" aside (and it is frustrating to see a vanity persona this way), the Valdemar world could certainly use a Myste-type character. I would have loved to have more descriptive scenes of Alberich, both at work and personally (having him keep and maintain twenty spy personas is patently ridiculous, of course, and it's not a very good secret since apparently the entire City Guard knows about them all -- but the Weaponsmaster work is interesting, one-man CIA aside). If I objected to romance and developing relationships, reading Lackey would be pretty dumb of me. But since we don't know anything about Myste except that she's a normal person, more or less (we never hear thing one about her companion), and we don't know how their relationship progresses except that it does, I thought the Myste of this book was a really unsatisfying character with an especially obnoxious name. And I am eagerly anticipating the horrifying disaster or quiet fact of life that makes Myste completely absent from her supposed role as Herald-Chronicler by the time Elspeth is fourteen (or however old she was in the arrows trilogy). Exile's Honor was really enjoyable, but this book just made me wish for more real character development of Alberich, more about Selenay, and a LOT more about Selenay's relationship with Talia and what happened with Talia between the Ancar stuff and the middle-aged den mother of the Storms trilogy (with all that Orthallen stuffed in, it's hard not to read Valor and think back, or chronologically forward). There's something to be said for quitting while you're ahead, though, so I'm not going to beg too hard for more about that. Two more notes: Continuity has been plummeting lately in Lackey's books -- the robes of the karsite priests, for example, are a mess, and so is this book. What really, really irks me, though, is the horrifying number of basic, easy, eminently fixable typos in all her recent works (leaving aside pathetic style gaffes someone should have called out). The fault there is squarely on editors and publishers. There is no excuse to fail so badly in proofreading a book -- and in this case, this is its second edition. Ugh.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good but.....
Review: This was a good story and filled in some holes in the life of Selaney and Alberich. The editing really needed work though. At one point, she couldnt decide what character was a bard or a trainee. Another point, the timeline regarding the death of the King of Rethwellen doesnt match with the one in "By the Sword" (by quite a bit).
Otherwise, I really enjoyed it and I look forward to more Valdemar books!
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