Book Review: The Collegium Chronicles: Redoubt, by Mercedes Lackey

DAW
330 pp.

Redoubt, book four of The Collegium Chronicles has a slow beginning and does not do very much to clear up the mysteries surrounding Mags’ parentage even though a great deal of the plot was centered on it. A great deal of the book is focused on variations of kirball, Mags’ apprenticeship as an undercover agent and his friends’ romantic difficulties and family problems. Then we get some foreshadowing in the form of someone telling Mags that the severe abuse Mags suffered as a child toughened him up so if anything horrible happened to him again he would be better able survive it. Then Mags gets kidnapped by the Mysterious Foreign Spies that have been a recurring menace in the series.

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Book Review: The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey

DAW
389 pp.

This entry in Lackey’s Elemental Masters series is a reworking of Sleeping Beauty. Lower class artist friends of the family take the place of Sleeping Beauty’s fairy god mothers, and the wicked fairy’s place is taken by a wicked aunt who is more than she appears. Our Heroine Marina Roeswood is raised in complete ignorance of the curse that was cast upon her when she was an infant, but not of her abilities as an Elemental Master of Water. Her only contact with her parents is via letters, and as far as Marina is concerned, her “real family” is the artists who raised her.

Book Review: Home from the Sea by Mercedes Lackey

DAW
311 pp.
This Elemental Masters book does not seem to follow the usual fairytale format. Instead, this is one of those “faery bride/groom” stories. The story follows Mari, a young woman with a great deal of magical power who discovers the secret behind her family’s unusual luck. Meanwhile, two young women need something to do that they might actually be good at; they are dispatched to locate a new Water Master.

Book Review: Changes, by Mercedes Lackey

DAW
326 pp.

In the third book of The Collegium Chronicles Herald Trainee Mags spends a lot of time manipulating his friends for their own good. (I think Lackey is trying to show that Mags is very perceptive and smart with a natural ability to solve people’s problems for them. I am not entirely comfortable with the way Mags maneuvers people into doing what he wants for “their own good.”) He is also being taught by the King’s Own to work under cover and also spends a lot of time dodging the foreign spies and assassins that have been a recurring plot point in the series.

Book Review: Unnatural Issue, by Mercedes Lackey

DAW

361 pp.

This most recent Elemental Master’s book is a variation of the Allerleiruah/King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter fairytale. When Richard Whitestone’s wife dies in childbirth he decides to completely abandon his work and shuts himself up in his manor house. Richard’s daughter Susanne was raised by the housekeeper and the cook. She spends most of her time working and performing the duties of an Elemental mage, duties which her father had abandoned. (The father is apparently too sunk in depression to notice his daughter is a very powerful Earth mage.)

Book Review: The Collegium Chronicles: Intrigues, by Mercedes Lackey

DAW
328 pp.

In the sequel to Foundation, Mags is a little more confident in some ways, but less in other ways. His determination to do everything correctly and certain reactions to perceived hostility has caused his fellow students to believe that he’s trying to “suck up” to the teachers. There’s also a significant problem involved with him continuing to live in the room above the Companion’s stables, and resulting in stories claiming that Mags has “something wrong” with him. It’s gotten to the point where various adults are trying to engage in a little psychological pressure to get him to move into student quarters. (It does not work; Mags does not seem to be very socially aware, which causes him a lot of trouble.)

Book Review: The Collegium Chronicles: Foundation, by Mercedes Lackey

DAW
340 pp

Foundation is the beginning of a new Valdemar series dealing with an era several hundred years before the “current” era, at the point where the education system for Heralds was beginning to change from “a mentor with a handful of Trainees” to and actual “Collegium” due to a sudden influx of Chosen. This creates quite a controversy among the active Heralds, many of whom are convinced that the “old ways” are superior to the new system.