The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy

The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey follows the adventures of the soon-to-be sole Herald-Mage Vanyel Ashkevron.

Vanyel is not your typical hero: he's pretty, he sings amazingly well, and wants nothing more than the love of his family. When his father banishes him from his home for being a coward, Vanyel dramatically thinks his life is over. Little does he know that his life has just begun. For it is away from his family that he realizes that he is shay-a-chern (ie, homosexual) and that he is in love with his mentor, Tylendel. Within a short period of time, they become life-bonded and are blissfully happy.

Until Tylendel goes insane after the death of his twin brother and seeks revenge against his enemies. As a result, his Companion (his horse-but-not-a-horse) repudiates him, dies in a fight to the death, and Tylendel kills himself. This in turn drives Vanyel to suicide, but is saved by his own Companion, since Tylendel's magic somehow ripped open the channels to Herald-Magery that were previously dormant in Vanyel.

All within the first half of the book.

Now what, I asked myself, could possibly be left? The answer: a lot of dramatics.

Despite being a lover of fantasy, this series, unfortunately, did not appeal to me. In general, I really liked the idea. However, and maybe because I read mainly male authors with a flair for warfare, I found this whole series to be anticlimatic. In each book, there is whining (although Vanyel does grow up, and while you can't blame him for mourning his lost love, it is incessant), and super cheesy lines.

When facing his first real enemy, the fellow hits on him, and wants him for his own. He even offers Vanyel a partnership if he joins him.

[Side note: This reminded me of the movie Labyrinth, where at the end the Goblin King offers the heroine his kingdom if she will love him and end her quest for her baby brother.]

Instead, Vanyel fries him with magic. And, does the same to his enemy in the second book. Seriously. I found the journey leading up the fight scene to be good. I found the dialogue, for the most part, to be entertaining. However, the anticlimatic scenes nearly killed me.

In the third book of the Trilogy, Mercedes Lackey even added a twist by revealing that Vanyel's lover, Stefan, was a re-incarnated Tylendel. However, she must really love having tortured souls as her heroes, since Vanyel ends up "dying" in his Last Strike against his enemy, Master Dark (honestly, that's what he called himself). Instead of a true death, Vanyel became a spirit that protected the Forest of Sorrows. He revealed himself to Stefan after Stefan went there to kill himself. However, Vanyel said that they could be together again in the distant future so Stefan, I'm sure, lived a lonely existence until he was an elderly man, when he was finally re-united with Vanyel.

I've read several books about soul mates (or life mates, or life bonded, or whatever the author chooses to call it) and it has never bothered me so much as it has in this series. Mainly because one partner has never died before. In her series, Mercedes Lackey essentially said if one half of the life bonded pair dies, the other half will never love someone else that way ever again. And not just the dramatic essence of it. They will never feel that strongly about someone else ever again. And they know it. And this makes me glad that we don't have those sorts of bonds in real life.

Criticism aside, I think the series is okay, and I've heard that her female leads in other books are strong women, so it could be just this single series that didn't appeal to me. I think that it could be that I'm used to a different style of writing as well, so went in with my normal fantasy expectations. I think that if I were younger too, it would have appealed to me more. Being the same age as Vanyel in his second book and hearing him constantly whine about his life made me lost some respect for him.

While I wouldn't extol the virtues of this book to others, I would probably suggest it if they weren't in to the fantasy books that I love.