Rating: 
Summary: Familiar Story with a bit of a "Twist"
Review: Oliver Twist, that is what this book reminds me of. However, it goes a bit beyond that. Being set in the distant past (Medievil times I believe), it tells the tale of a young orphan boy that winds up running away from his abusive uncle and cousin and being accepted into a "Gang" of thieves, headed by a 50 year old man with no legs. Here he is taught the art of theft in much the same way it was in Oliver Twist. When his new "Family" is killed he goes looking for revenge. A straight forward tale, very easy to follow (Although the charachter's "Dialect" is a bit difficult to read).
Rating: 
Summary: Take A Thief
Review: I read alot of Mercedes Lackey and like her books. But I can't say this is her best. Its not bad, but I wish they had developed some of the other characters more. You have to know them to care about them.
Rating: 
Summary: Yuck!
Review: I'm a big fan of Mercedes Lackey, but all I can say about her latest book is Yuck! Skif has always been one of my favorite characters, and I'm sad that Lackey did not spend the time or effort required to make good story about him, but instead coughed out this garbage. The entire book is basically outlined in the jacket cover, which is one of the stupidest things I've seen. I kept expecting Skif to be chosen (for the first 200 pages) so we could move past that which was already outlined for us, but he wasn't chosen until the book was just about over! On top of having to read all the details about his history (which are totally boring -- reading the jacket cover gives you all that you need to know) we were stuck reading thieves cant and Karse broken english. And frankly, this (stuff) was really hard to read. I spent more time going back over sentences trying to figure out what the thieves were saying than I ever would want to. If Lackey had wanted to have such broken english in her book, she should have figured out a better way to write it. Even better, she could have just described how broken their english was, and given us the correct spellings and punctuations so we could figure out what was going on without having to labor through it! I was very disapointed with this book. It's such a shame that she has taken such a great character, and ruined it. Read at your own risk!
Rating:
Summary: very good but not great
Review: This book has the usual well crafted story which makes it better than many other authors' best works. However, I agree with other reviewers that this book is lacking that extra spark that made the "Arrows" and the "Magic" trilogies great. The books I enjoy the most are the ones that make me feel the most when I read them. This book doesn't do that as well as Mercedes Lackey's early books. For example, in the later part of the book Skif says that Cymry fills a void and that she is what he has been searching for. Skif did not appear to me to be lonely or searching for a life companion before he met Cymry; abused and angry, yes, but not lonely. I've heard it said that the young feel things more intensely and unfortunately it seems to be true for authors and their works. As with the Valdemar series, I find the later works of other series such as Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, and Piers Anthony's Xanth books lacking the emotional intensity of the early works.
Rating: 
Summary: In depth information about a character
Review: Although I cannot disagree with a previous reviewer's comments that this book doesn't further the general storyline of Valdemar, I appreciate the in-depth treatment of a single character. I also have to admit that I would like to see more books like this. Ms. Lackey manages to accomplish a very, very difficult task: to focus almost exclusively on one character's experiences and viewpoint, without turning the other characters into cardboard cutouts. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who had already read the "Arrow's" trilogy, but this is not a good book to introduce yourself to this world.
Rating:
Summary: Valdemar, but smaller
Review: For Skif, joining a small band of thieves is a huge step up in the world. For the first time in his life, he has a warn place to sleep, enough (if barely) to eat, and someone to teach him useful skills (like pickpocketing). When a fire destroys his new family and arson is rumored, Skif vowes revenge. His plots, however, are severely disrupted when he is selected by a 'companion.' Instead of simply being a thief, Skif is the first thief-Herald. TAKE A THIEF is an intriguing addition to author Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series. Skif is an engaging character. His turn to thiefery fully understandable given the rough conditions of his upbringing and the alternatives available to him. Lackey's description of the bond between human and companion (a horse-like sapient creature capable of mental communications directly with a selected human and with other companions) is emotionally compelling and vivid. TAKE A THIEF plays for relatively small stakes in the Valdemar universe. Instead of great evils that threaten the world, Skif must deal with kidnappers, arsonists, and lords with too much money and not enough sense. The smaller scape of this novel means that more of the enjoyment comes from Lackey's fine descriptions of the city and its poverty-stricken slums. Although Lackey doesn't avoid describing the evils of poverty (including alcoholism, prostitution, and human slavery), the thief band she describes are probably just a little too perfect to be credible even in a fantasy universe like that of Valdemar. Still, TAKE A THIEF is a fine read, enhanced by Lackey's engaging style.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty Disappointing
Review: I dragged myself through the first few chapters wincing at the implied accents. Once the main character reached the Collegium I thought it would pick up, which it did, then began to lose momentum. I'll still wait for another Valdemar novel, but this one doesn't cut it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for many ages - editing mistakes aside
Review: I felt that this book was excellent. While Lackey might do well to insist on a better editor for her books - the usually editorial errors like missing punctuation and such - the writing was excellent. What I like about Lackey, in general, is that she tends to write to the age level of the character. While some view the fluctuations between higher and more complex text and plot negatively, I find it wonderful. Books in which the character is mostly a child or innocent tend to be written to be accessible to younger readers, while books with older or more experienced characters - and often in more adult situations - tend to be written at a higher level. This does not make the "younger" books less accessible for adults, just more so for children. I enjoy these views into the histories of characters and of Valedemar itself. There is only so far you can take one story line, without running out of steam, running out of the world, or going past the point where the story should have ended. Instead of wearing out one story line, I think that filling in the little back stories does a lot to develop the readers impressions of the entire world and gives us an opportunity to see how little things often interconnect. In its own way it is advancing the major story line - it is just filling in and enriching our past understanding. These forays, in books like Burning Brightly and Take a Thief, are also nice, easy to read books. Tidbits to tide us over until the next book comes out. Books that can stand on their own. A book that someone unfamiliar to Mercedes Lackey or Valdemar could read, understand, and have stand satisfyingly on its own. Many of her books, without reading many or all previous, make little sense, as the back story in almost always necessary. I love them, but don't think they do much to draw new readers. Books like this one do that. The story is compassionate, heart-wrenching, and compelling. The reader feels empathy for young Skif, as he struggles to survive. We scream at the injustices in his imagined world - and are forced to acknowledge them in ours. If child slavery and starvation and abuse can happen in Haven, the capital of the Heralds, than we cannot deny its presence in our world. Yes, it is appropriate to young adult readers, but as it should. It deals with issues many of them can understand as well - and it teaches all of us that there are options other than giving in to the corruption and pressure we are confronted with.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but somewhat simple
Review: While I do agree with others that this book is not up to Misty's earlier Valdemar books, I really enjoyed it. Continuing the story of Skif was really good, and I enjoyed the look at how the lower half of Haven functions (even if it's idealistic). However, there were also things I really didn't like about the book as well. First off, I didn't really feel like Skif's character was truly developed in the sense that he has the Herald's good character. Generally, all I got was that while he had some good qualities, they were not the prominent ones and they weren't really brought out after he's chosen. Another problem was the time line. I had always gotten the impression that Skif was just a few years ahead of Talia, but that Dick and Kris were quite a few more. Yet in this book, they were all together as Trainees. I also didn't like the way that Alberich's speech patterns were brought out. It made it seem as if he hadn't been there long enough to be comfortable with the language, yet in Arrows of the Queen he speaks it smoothly. Finally, there was that end speech done by the "Bad Guy" (I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it yet). If you've read the song "Laws" at the end of Arrow's Fall, it seems like Misty was just trying to make it fit in somewhere.
Rating:
Summary: For Valdemar lovers only
Review: This might have been a good novelette, or maybe even a decent novella. As a novel, however, it's remarkably weak and for the most part pretty disappointing. The first half in particular seems to consist of the author on auto-pilot, 'borrowing' (to put it kindly) outrageously from Dickens' Oliver Twist, Hugo's The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and Heinlein's Citizen Of The Galaxy. If there was anything original in the first half of the book, it failed to make itself known through the cliched rehash that one had to plow through to get to where things finally pick up a bit. The second half is somewhat better, once Skif meets his Companion, Cymry, when he attempts to steal her. The story improves slowly from that point on, and the ending I found to be at least partially satisfying. It would have been more so if I hadn't been forced to read through 350 pages to get to it, and if the villain hadn't ended up being such a cardboard cut-out. Die-hard Valdemar fans will want to read this just for the sake of completeness, but I can't really recommend it to anyone else. At least, not to anyone that's actually read any significant amount of fantasy fiction. I think this book is a result of the publisher insisting on a novel-length piece when only a novelette or novella was needed, and of the author being either rushed or lazy. Either way, it was pretty disappointing. Not bad, mind you, but just not what one would expect from such an established and respected author.
| 
