Magic's Price

2.5 Originally posted at Fantasy Literature. http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/magics-price/

In Magic???s Price, the third book in Mercedes Lackey???s THE LAST HERALD MAGE trilogy, we discover how this trilogy got its name. It???s been nine years since the previous story ended and the Herald-Mages are being knocked off one by one. Valdemar is in great danger. Vanyel is ???the last Herald-Mage??? and there???s a target on his back. If he dies, how will Valdemar survive a magical attack by enemies? Can Vanyel and Yfandes, his Companion horse, find and stop Master Dark, the evil magician, before Valdemar is doomed?

Obviously there is much at stake for Vanyel and his beloved country in Magic???s Price. Vanyel is the most powerful person in the realm and at first he doesn???t even know who his enemy is. All he knows is that he and the people close to him are targets, so Vanyel moves his family to court in Haven where, he hopes, he can keep them safe.

In Haven, Vanyel???s friend King Randale is also in trouble. He???s dying and the heir to the throne is an untrained youth. Randale is having trouble governing the realm because he???s in so much pain. Fortunately, Vanyel???s nephew at the bardic school has a classmate named Stefen who has the gift of easing pain with his music. Stefen is brought to court to see if he might help King Randale. It turns out that Stefen is a great admirer of Vanyel, not only because of Vanyel???s power and authority in the realm, but also because Vanyel is openly homosexual. Stefen, who is also openly homosexual, tries to seduce Vanyel, but Vanyel is worried about the huge age difference and how it might look if he has a relationship with such a young man. He???s also worried, of course, about the safety of anyone close to him.

Vanyel is much older and more mature (and less emo) in this book which is partly why it didn???t annoy me nearly as much as the previous books did. There???s also a better balance between story and romance, though the romance still feels like it gets more of the author???s attention to detail. The rest of the plot is typical fluffy epic fantasy that, frankly, feels uninspired. There???s a dimly developed dark mage with a vast army who has to be defeated before he overruns the good mage???s country. Ho hum. Except for the sexual orientation of the good mage, it just doesn???t stand out in any way.

Readers who like the Hawkbrothers will be glad to see them back in Magic???s Price. They bring help and enlightening information. There are some deep personal tragedies for Vanyel in Magic???s Price, but also some sweet reconciliatory moments which I won???t spoil for you. And, of course, the possibility of a new true love though, to accomplish this it seems like Lackey has to change the rules of how magic works in Valdemar. I understood that a person could form only one life-bond during their lifetime, but Lackey twists things a bit to allow Vanyel to have two life-bonds. This felt contrived to me.

In the end there is a ???price??? for Vanyel???s magic and many soft-hearted readers will appreciate the bittersweet finale of THE LAST HERALD MAGE. I might have appreciated it, too, if I had liked Vanyel a little better. He is much more likable in this book, but that was too late for me.

The audio production by Brilliance Audio continues to be excellent. Gregory Nassif St John is perfect in this role and I hope he???ll be doing more fantasy in the future!

Overall, this series was a lot of fun and I look forward to checking out the Arrows trilogy some time soon. I was a little confused that the first book of Arrows spoiled something that only developed in this book, the last installment of the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, but yet Arrows was published before!

This trilogy was groundbreaking at the time it was published (the late 80s to early 90s) for not only having its protagonist as homosexual, but also imagining a world where this was normalized (although homophobia isn't absent entirely, which is fine because that sounds increasingly like our current modern society as well). Although Vanyel is homosexual (or shaych, as the book calls it), his sexuality is never fetishized and there isn't any gratuitous scenes revolving around that. Whatever love, romance, and physical intimacy is pretty much on the same level as any other romance in any other book.

I was a little worried I'd be completely lost since it's been a while since I last read the first two books, but Lackey does a really good job at very slowly reintroducing the reader into the world of Valdemar. Instead of being plunged into the deep end of things, which I have almost come to take as a default way for fantasy books to go, there was something soothing and refreshing about how slowly Lackey takes to re-introduce the reader into the world. I never once felt lost or like I need to read a summary of the previous two books to get back up to speed with the book.

The world of Valdemar is extensive and this series is just one out of many that Lackey has written for the universe. It's the predecessor to something like the Cosmere books by Brandon Sanderson, where everything links to one another and there're little nods and winks in each series to other characters and events that happen in other series, so that's really fun. I'm looking forward to re-visiting the Arrows trilogy after this.

Vanyel has grown so much since the very first book, where he came across as a whiney brat imo. In this one, he's around his late 30s to early 40s and clearly has worked through so much of his pain, suffering, and grief to come through as a much wiser man, though he somehow does not come across as jaded. Stefen was a nice foil to him, although the age gap between the two was a little eyebrow-raising - I guess this may not have been that problematic at the time it was written. I know Stefen is meant to be Tylendrel's reincarnation or something so that kinda explains why he's so young, since Tylendrel only passed 17-18 years before the events of this book, and the age gap will always exist if this reincarnation thing is going to happen.

The book really escalated quickly in the last quarter. Things, even dreadful things, start happening left right center and I could barely keep up with what's going on. Spoilery thoughts: thought Van's being the victim of sexual abuse was a bit unnecessary and almost seems out of character for this book, and indeed this trilogy, which hasn't been particularly sexually violent just until then. i was so happy when it turned out that Fandes hadn't actually died earlier though. I did wonder why so many important things took place "off camera" though, like how exactly Van and Fandes defeated Leareth, and we didn't even get to see Randale and Shavri die, or how Trev and Jisa's marriage panned out!

This is a series I'd definitely recommend to any fantasy lover, but I'd also give the caveat that this needs to be read in context of the time it was published. By today's standards, the homosexuality in this book is probably mild and nothing in comparison, but I can see how impactful this would've been back in the time it was published.