currents

[ex_pippin880]

Whatcha reading at the moment? Would you recommend it to others?

After taking a break to read 42 volumes of Dragon Ball I've gone back to The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, an anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I've read less than half of its contents, but so far I've been more disappointed than pleased. Hopefully the quality will pick up...

Comments

[tallan]

I've just started The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey. Started working my way through her Velgarth/Valdemar books about a week ago, and I enjoy them a lot. The Arrow's trilogy was cute (complete wishfulfillment!), By the Sword was total love (Kerowyn!), and Mage Winds was quite good (Elspeth is badass). Just wish I had found them when I was a kid, I think they would've meant a whole lot (more) to me back then.

[geekmama]

I was the lucky one who had Mercedes Lackey recommended to her just as she was beginning puberty and ended up with the Herald Vanyel trilogy (Magic's Pawn/Promise/Price) being the very first books I read by her. It was the first time I had ever seen a non-straight pairing in anything I had read before and was immediately hooked.

A couple months ago I found the first volume of the Bardic Voices trilogy (The Lark and the Wren) in a local used bookstore and picked it up but hadn't gotten around to reading it until a few weeks ago. (I tend to pick up books in bulk when at used bookstores, eheh. ^^;) I liked that the novel itself was based on a short story, Fiddler Fair, that was featured in a collection of short stories by the same name but I thought that the contention between the Church and the main character was a little forced. It's a story I'd like to see redone to make it read.. smoother.

I'd recommend The Lark and the Wren to people who are looking for an entertaining read but nothing that's really mind stretching.

[tallan]

Sounds lovely. I haven't gotten to the Vanyel books yet, but it's very refreshing and somehow.. relieving? to find queer characters and same-sex pairings highly visible and interactive in all books I've read so far. It's normalising and that makes me happy.

Bardic Voices is an entirely separate universe, right? I'll have to see if I can get my hands on them later on.

[geekmama]

Yep, it's an entirely different universe!

It's not just the same-sex pairings that make me skip with joy when I get a new Mercedes Lackey book, it's all the female characters as well that aren't.. useless. Kerowyn is a prime example of why I love Lackey's writing so much. She's honest about the hardships women face becoming Heralds and mercenaries as well as the hardships they face staying a farmer's wife or influential guild member's wife. Avoiding the pointy end of a sword can be, and is, just as difficult as raising a family and playing Healer to a village when there isn't a green robe nearby.

An added bonus, for me, is that in the Arrow's trilogy, Talia had to help pair together a pair of lesbians when one's partner died and she commented that they could have been a trio that worked out had time and fate given them the chance. Not only is she working with queer characters in an awesome way, but she just acknowledged and tackled polyamory too. Pretty awesome in my opinion.

[wanderer]

I love The Lark and the Wren. I don't think you find anything mindstretching in any of ML's books, but it's fun, and I love the energy in the cast of characters. Unlike some of the Valdemar books, I find that the lesson doesn't overpower the story. They're still a bit Disney-ish in the way the right action always leads to reward, but eh, that's just her style.

[ex_pippin880]

I wish I'd known about her as a kid too. I first found them when I was 18, and I just couldn't get past the bleh. :(

(But then I found out that past the bleh is stuff I've never been interested in, so maybe not even as a kid.)