Magic's Pawn

Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.

Vanyel Ashkevron is miserable at home. His father, one of the lords of Valdemar, wants him to be a warrior like the other boys in the family, but Vanyel, who???s more interested in clothes and music, wants to be a bard. After getting beat up by the armsmaster, Vanyel is sent to be fostered by his Aunt Savil who trains Valdemar???s Herald-Mages. At first he is terrified, but soon he realizes that he is finally free to discover the truths about himself. He experiences love and tragedy and, in the end, he???s a completely different person.

Magic???s Pawn is the first book in Mercedes Lackey???s THE LAST HERALD MAGE trilogy which is part of her larger VALDEMAR saga. They???ve finally been produced in audio format by Brilliance Audio. Actor Gregory Nassif St. John, who is a relatively new audiobook narrator, does a great job with the narration. As far as I can tell, this is his first fiction audiobook (at least the first that???s available at Amazon/Audible) and I hope we???ll be seeing ??? I mean hearing ??? more of him.

Mercedes Lackey is known for her high epic fantasy and THE LAST HERALD MAGE is classic high epic fantasy. If you???ve had enough of castles, kings, bards, swords, feudalism, patriarchy, fuzzy magic, telepathic horses, and place names riddled with apostrophes, look elsewhere. Magic???s Pawn was published in 1989 and mostly it feels like a 1989 fantasy novel.

However, where it distinguishes itself a little is in Lackey???s choice of a homosexual teenage boy for a protagonist. I admire Lackey for her willingness to experiment this way with what I think of as fluffy fantasy. Gay characters were rare in that type of fiction in 1989, which is probably why Magic???s Pawn was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men???s Science Fiction/Fantasy.

However, I doubt that this is really how homosexual boys want to be portrayed in fiction. Vanyel doesn???t realize that he???s gay until he gets to his Aunt???s house where he meets another gay boy, but Vanyel???s father, who has suspected his son???s orientation all along, is horrified at the thought that his son isn???t ???normal.??? (Thus, his poor treatment at home.) Vanyel is known among his household as an effeminate ???peacock.??? He???s a bit foppish and likes to dress and pose dramatically. He hides when it???s time for weapons practice, he get beat up, he whines, he broods as he reads books and plays his instruments in his secret room, he considers suicide, and he thinks about himself constantly. He???s REALLY EMO! It???s easy to feel sorry for him, but it???s hard to like him or to want to spend time listening to him feel sorry for himself all the time. (Readers who admire angsty suicidal teenagers will like this a lot better than I did.) But my point here is that I???m not sure that homosexual people will appreciate this stereotypical characterization of gay teenage boys. Vanyel is defined by his sexuality and other peoples??? reaction to it, and that???s not the right way to handle any hero.

Another problem is that Lackey???s messages are so obvious and ham-fisted. The first message is that we should be tolerant and understanding of gay people. The second is that they love and bond just as deeply as heterosexual people do. That???s nice, but unfortunately these messages are so frequent and obvious that they feel like a sermon. A little subtlety would have served the tone better.

Perhaps this played better in 1989, but in 2014 this story feels emo and preachy and, unfortunately, Vanyel???s sexuality is the main focus of the story. The actual ???plot??? seems like filler. I???m going to give Magic???s Pawn two stars. The story is simply awful, but at least Lackey did something different from most of her 1980s peers.

This was an easy and engaging read with magic school and romance elements - but which then takes a darker and more epic turn in the second act.Vanyel Ashkevron is the odd one out in his family - he runs away from rather than allows himself to be “heroically” bullied by various teachers hired by his father, the epitome of toxic masculinity, and is this exiled to his aunt Savil's school. There he finds more appropriate education - and love. But then things don't go according to plan when Savil discovers a hidden well of previously locked abilities in Van.Van reminded me strongly of the teen angst rife in [b:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) J.K. Rowling https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546910265l/2.SX50.jpg 2809203], especially with the suffering at the hands of parental figures, and the magic school setting. I sympathized with his situation but was also ultimately fairly indifferent to Van until the second act. The character growth then started slow and didn't in fact reach any kind of peak or max potential by the end of the book - which I wasn't mad at since this is a series after all, and Van showed enough growth to give us a good taster of what was to come, without leaving him stranded with no clear path to take in subsequent instalments.While I somewhat enjoyed the relationship between Van and Lendel, I felt that more could be done in the leading-up to it. We got a lot of their chemistry and dynamics after they had reached an understanding, but not so much on how they got there. So I wasn't quite sure or convinced about why they were almost immediately attracted to each other, even to the extent of becoming Lifebound (did I remember that term correctly?) so quickly. I also don't know the mechanics and principles of becoming Lifebound as that wasn't explored in much detail in the book, but it seems pretty scary to me that you would be so inextricably bound to this person that you may not even know that well.The magic system was complex and intriguing. I'm still not sure if I completely understand all there is to know about the world or the system, which augurs well for a series. Even the last third of the book introduces to us the whole new world of Tayledras and its magic, similar but different to that learnt in Valdemar, which I suppose we will learn even more about in later books. The Tayledras strongly reminded me of the elves in Lord of the Rings, just as the Valdemar mages reminded me of the wizards in Harry Potter.More importantly, Lackey tackles a number of relevant and surprisingly modern issues in the book. Surprising because this book was, after all, published in 1989! From the very beginning up to the end, Van (and other characters like his aunt Savil and his sister Lissa) rebels against the mindless toxic masculinity in his world, which preaches that mindless war and violence was glorious and exciting simply because it was manly. There was also some exploration about the social stigmas of being homosexual, and I can see this being a great coming-of-age story to read especially for teens and young adults struggling with the same issues that Vanyel does.

  Fantasy is my favorite genre, but I will admit that I have a blind spot to what that genre was like post-Tolkien pre-Jordan.  It seems like for most fantasy readers you can go straight from LOTR to WoT and you won't miss anything important.  For my entire life up to this point I was one of those readers, but after seeing a nice omnibus version of Mercedes Lackey's ‘The Last Herald-Mage' trilogy on the shelf of my local Barnes and Noble I decided to change that.    That was overall a good decision because this book is real good.  It's just really nicely written fantasy full of lush descriptions of fantastical places, a cool magic system and some major conflicts.  In many ways it ticks off every box that you'd expect a fantasy novel to check off but when the quality is this good it's hard to care.  Stereotypical fantasy can still be good if it's well-written and Lackey is someone who just gets how to write a story.    In many ways this book is stereotypical, but the way it isn't is what truly elevates it.  It's good that I'm reading this book in June because it is literally  gay.  Further research tells me that this is the first fantasy book ever published with a gay protagonist.  Lackey's introduction at the beginning of the omnibus says that many people have written to her about how this book and trilogy as a whole helped them come to terms with their own sexualities and I'm really happy that this book has had such a positive impact and I can totally see why.  Lackey does a wonderful job writing Vanyel's homosexuality.  She makes it very clear that the romance between Vanyel and Tylandel is totally natural and that the love they feel for one another is totally legitimate.  A message like that is important even today and I can't imagine being a closeted teenager in the 80's reading this.  Lackey downplays her own greatness in the introduction but I still think she deserves a lot of credit.    All in all this is a really strong start to what is sure to be a great trilogy.