Bookish thoughts: Last Herald Mage series
Jul. 27th, 2006 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayI'm on a re-reading The Last Herald Mage kick again at the moment and it's got me thinking about how my view of the books has changed over the years.
I read Magic's Pawn for the first time when I was seventeen and thoroughly adored it. I didn't even notice that Vanyel spent most of the book being a brat because it was a book that spoke to me in a different way from anything I'd read before. In retrospect, I was probably going through an angsty-emo phase myself, so Van felt like a friend who was in the same place as me.
I found Magic's Promise a few months later and didn't enjoy it nearly as much, although I still devoured it. Tylendel was dead and the rest of the plot didn't really catch me the way that the first book had.
I didn't get my paws on a copy of Magic's Price until a couple of years later and I absolutely loved it, even though the final 150 pages traumatised me completely. I still need to be in a particular mood to get past page 200 when I'm re-reading.
Anyway, it's been a while since I re-read the entire lot and I've noticed that the way I view the books has changed a lot. Don't get me wrong, I still adore them to pieces. I don't think that's ever going to change.
My feelings about Vanyel, though, have changed. The first book doesn't speak to me in the same way anymore and I can see exactly how bratty and OTT Van is in that book. His relationship with Tylendel isn't particularly healthy and I'm not sure that it ever would have been with pre-Mage Vanyel. I can see how damaged Van is, but I can also see that some of it is down to his "woe is me" attitude through much of it. I still grin at the scene when he finally gets Tylendel and 'Lendel's death is still traumatising, but I think that I'm looking at Van more rationally now. When I first read it, that Van was only a couple of years younger than me. He's now twelve years younger and I think that I'm now looking at him from an adult's perspective.
I'm currently most of the way through Magic's Promise and I'm enjoying much more than I did when I was a kid. It's probably the one that I've read the least (this might be only my third re-read) and I've always remembered it as the boring one. Reading it now, at the same age as that Vanyel, I'm able to understand it much better and enjoy what Mercedes Lackey is doing here. He's still rather angsty, but not in a brattish way. In this book Vanyel knows what he is, but he's trying to work out how that fits with what he's doing and what's happening around him. I think part of the reason that I didn't enjoy it before is because he's questioning his relationship with Shavri and what happened with 'Lendel - trying to work out how his sexuality slots into his life and what it means to have strong feelings for a woman. That's something that actually makes sense to me now where it seemed pretty pointless ten years ago. The main meat of the story also works better for me now, and I think it's because I'm enjoying the book for what it is rather than missing the romance element of the first and third books.
I haven't re-read Magic's Price yet, but I read it last year. It's been my favourite of the three for a few years, largely because I love the relationship between Stefen and Vanyel. I suspect that this may also be the reason why I find it the most difficult to read to the end. I like this Vanyel the best out of all the best, but he's also the saddest of them all. He's accepted who he is, what he is and what that means but he's also learnt that he's too dangerous for other people. Unlike book 2, he isn't angsting about being alone all the time. He's accepted that he'll always be alone and it's easier for him than the alternative. It's the book that starts to tear down a lot of what we've grown to love in ML's world and puts the building blocks in place for most of her other Valdemar books. If you read them in the order that I did, starting with LHM and then finding Arrows, the rest of the books seem a little sad because I'm always missing Van. I do wonder how I'd view this trilogy if I'd found her books in a different order.
There is something of a sense that ML can't leave her characters happy. I adore Stefen precisely because he breaks down that isolated Vanyel that she's built, but in many ways the entire book is building to Van's end. ML puts all of her characters through the wringer, but probably Van more than any other. Even Stefen feels like he's there to give Van a happy final few months - his reward - before she finally kills him. It's a heroic death, but still crueler than it needs to be. Or at least, that's how I feel about that book at this age. Maybe when I get to Van's age in that book and read it I'll feel differently about him yet again.
Well, that turned into a longer piece of babble than I'd expected.
I read Magic's Pawn for the first time when I was seventeen and thoroughly adored it. I didn't even notice that Vanyel spent most of the book being a brat because it was a book that spoke to me in a different way from anything I'd read before. In retrospect, I was probably going through an angsty-emo phase myself, so Van felt like a friend who was in the same place as me.
I found Magic's Promise a few months later and didn't enjoy it nearly as much, although I still devoured it. Tylendel was dead and the rest of the plot didn't really catch me the way that the first book had.
I didn't get my paws on a copy of Magic's Price until a couple of years later and I absolutely loved it, even though the final 150 pages traumatised me completely. I still need to be in a particular mood to get past page 200 when I'm re-reading.
Anyway, it's been a while since I re-read the entire lot and I've noticed that the way I view the books has changed a lot. Don't get me wrong, I still adore them to pieces. I don't think that's ever going to change.
My feelings about Vanyel, though, have changed. The first book doesn't speak to me in the same way anymore and I can see exactly how bratty and OTT Van is in that book. His relationship with Tylendel isn't particularly healthy and I'm not sure that it ever would have been with pre-Mage Vanyel. I can see how damaged Van is, but I can also see that some of it is down to his "woe is me" attitude through much of it. I still grin at the scene when he finally gets Tylendel and 'Lendel's death is still traumatising, but I think that I'm looking at Van more rationally now. When I first read it, that Van was only a couple of years younger than me. He's now twelve years younger and I think that I'm now looking at him from an adult's perspective.
I'm currently most of the way through Magic's Promise and I'm enjoying much more than I did when I was a kid. It's probably the one that I've read the least (this might be only my third re-read) and I've always remembered it as the boring one. Reading it now, at the same age as that Vanyel, I'm able to understand it much better and enjoy what Mercedes Lackey is doing here. He's still rather angsty, but not in a brattish way. In this book Vanyel knows what he is, but he's trying to work out how that fits with what he's doing and what's happening around him. I think part of the reason that I didn't enjoy it before is because he's questioning his relationship with Shavri and what happened with 'Lendel - trying to work out how his sexuality slots into his life and what it means to have strong feelings for a woman. That's something that actually makes sense to me now where it seemed pretty pointless ten years ago. The main meat of the story also works better for me now, and I think it's because I'm enjoying the book for what it is rather than missing the romance element of the first and third books.
I haven't re-read Magic's Price yet, but I read it last year. It's been my favourite of the three for a few years, largely because I love the relationship between Stefen and Vanyel. I suspect that this may also be the reason why I find it the most difficult to read to the end. I like this Vanyel the best out of all the best, but he's also the saddest of them all. He's accepted who he is, what he is and what that means but he's also learnt that he's too dangerous for other people. Unlike book 2, he isn't angsting about being alone all the time. He's accepted that he'll always be alone and it's easier for him than the alternative. It's the book that starts to tear down a lot of what we've grown to love in ML's world and puts the building blocks in place for most of her other Valdemar books. If you read them in the order that I did, starting with LHM and then finding Arrows, the rest of the books seem a little sad because I'm always missing Van. I do wonder how I'd view this trilogy if I'd found her books in a different order.
There is something of a sense that ML can't leave her characters happy. I adore Stefen precisely because he breaks down that isolated Vanyel that she's built, but in many ways the entire book is building to Van's end. ML puts all of her characters through the wringer, but probably Van more than any other. Even Stefen feels like he's there to give Van a happy final few months - his reward - before she finally kills him. It's a heroic death, but still crueler than it needs to be. Or at least, that's how I feel about that book at this age. Maybe when I get to Van's age in that book and read it I'll feel differently about him yet again.
Well, that turned into a longer piece of babble than I'd expected.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-27 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-28 09:00 am (UTC)The books are my favourites of ML's. I really enjoy pretty much everything she's written, but these are the ones that really grab me had have suffered the most re-reading.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-30 08:07 pm (UTC)Same here. I haven't read them in years and I was fascinated to read your analysis. I wonder how my perceptions will have changed, given that I've grown up a lot since the first reading.
I never found the 3rd book that devestating: in a sense, I thought it was so romantic that they would be 'together forever' in the trees. I think it was reading in later books, about the legends of the lovers in the forest (or something like that), where their spirits still existed, that made me smile.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 09:23 am (UTC)I think, for me, I didn't really see anything romantic about being together forever as spirits. It felt like Van was cheated out of being happy - he's only been physically there with Tylendel-Stefen for a few months in his entire life. Although I can see why their fate is a romantic one, it's seemed as satisfying to me. The other reason I find it so traumatic is the way that Vanyel closes down and pushes Stefen away after Savil's death. The things that happen to him at that castle are pretty dreadful, but he starts shutting down before that. I find the final couple of chapters much easier to read than the five or six chapters before that - if I'm going to stop ready, it's usually just before Savil's death. I'm a sad sap who sometimes wants to pretend that Van and Stefen are alive and happy in Haven :-)