Magic's Promise

4 stars. Honestly I went into this with almost no recollection of what happened in the first book and was confused for a great part of it. A lot of explanations and recaps came after the 75% mark which I certainly wish could have been earlier. Overall, though, the book got off from a slightly confusing and very introspective beginning, an exciting middle, and an excellent end.

The thing about these Valdemar's stories is that half the dialogue is MindSpeech, or basically telepathy. That being the case, you not only have entire conversations taking place in italics, but we readers are also very privy to our protagonist Vanyel's every thought and mental soliloquy. I don't feel like I've read a book like this before but I'm not mad. It does get a bit much in the beginning, maybe even the whole first half of the book, where I felt like we were just getting Vanyel lamenting about how tired he was and traveling from place to place catching up with people. That's fine though because it was oddly relatable to my life.

I think things really kicked up a notch in the middle after Tashir is introduced (and the circumstances around that). I gotta say that I had trouble sort of telling apart Tashir and Medren quite often, them both being young boys who are hero-worshipping Vanyel for whatever reasons and for whom Van does good turns.

I really enjoyed the whole ending sequence which I won't spoil here, but especially when Van is presented with a certain choice which is really interesting to me and already makes me want to read the next instalment to see how shit is going to hit the fan.

  I really liked this one.  There were about a million different directions Lackey could have gone in with the end of Magic's Pawn but I'm glad she chose this one in particular.  Magic's Promise doesn't pick up right after the end of its predecessor, instead it takes us 13 years into the future.  Vanyel is no longer a love-stricken teenager, he's now a 28-year old full blown Herald-Mage who has seen and done some insane shit since he was 15.  We get bits and pieces as to what he's done but we aren't directly told all of it, which is a smart decision in my opinion.  All we need to know is that Vanyel has been worn down by his duties and he is exhausted.  He still hasn't totally gotten over the loss of Tylandel and you can feel his pain every time he's mentioned.  Vanyel's mental state is the main focus of the book and he is absolutely a compelling-enough protagonist to pull it off.     As for other new things, there are quite a few of them in Promise.  The cast gets expanded, the existing cast gets developed and we see a ton of different locations, making Valdemar feel like a very real, alive place.  I know that Lackey has written a ton of books set in Valdemar and you can tell she just has such a control of this world.  The expanded cast also helps to separate this book from Pawn.  Tashir and Medren are the obvious stand-outs here as characters who exist on their own while also adding a lot to Vanyel.  But the best part about this book has to be the development of Jervis and Withen.  In Pawn they're pretty cartoonishly evil, but Lackey makes them so much more sympathetic here.  Their turnarounds aren't especially subtle but they're still quite heartwarming.    All in all this is a really strong sequel and I look forward to finishing the trilogy with Magic's Price.