Arrows of the Queen (Her­alds of Valde­mar) by Mer­cedes Lackey is the first book in the series. This guest review was writ­ten by Janet Webb aka @JanetNorCal for April’s TBR Chal­lenge. No ebook could be found (cries)

*****

Thank you so much to my Cana­dian farmwife friend who very kindly gave me this book. Here’s the back­cover description:

“Cho­sen by the Com­pan­ion Rolan, a mys­ti­cal horse-like being with pow­ers beyond imag­in­ing, Talia, once a run­away, has now become a trainee Her­ald, des­tined to become one of the Queens’s own élite guard. For Talia has cer­tain awak­en­ing tal­ents of the mind that only a Com­pan­ion like Rolan can truly sense.

But as Talia strug­gles to mas­ter her unique abil­i­ties, time is run­ning out. For con­spir­acy is brew­ing in Valde­mar, a deadly trea­son which could destroy Queen and king­dom. Opposed by unknown ene­mies capa­ble of both dia­bol­i­cal magic and treach­er­ous assas­si­na­tion, the Queen must turn to Talia and the Her­alds for aid in pro­tect­ing the realm and insur­ing the future of the queen’s heir, a child already in dan­ger of becom­ing bespelled by the Queen’s own foes.”

Here’s what I liked — this book evoked mem­o­ries of com­ing of age mas­ter­pieces, like The Wiz­ard of Earth­sea by Ursula Le Guin. It was won­der­ful that the hero­ine, rather unusu­ally, was the focus of this coming-of-age and into-your-powers book: usu­ally it’s a young man’s jour­ney into man­hood. I knew noth­ing of the author or the date of pub­li­ca­tion (1987) but when I put it down, I was struck by how sub­tly and believ­ably notions of women’s equal­ity, con­tra­cep­tive access and accept­abil­ity, and casual accep­tance of same-gender rela­tion­ships were woven into the story. I guess that truly makes it fan­tasy. Talia, when she came of age, was told directly how to man­age con­tra­cep­tion: there was not even a hint that this was any­thing but a per­sonal deci­sion and that what­ever she decided would be the right choice for her.

It was an adven­ture, a board­ing school tale (seri­ously, I was think­ing shades of Harry Pot­ter when I read about Talia’s years of tutor­ship and learn­ing when she was part of the Queen’s King­dom). There were even rich, enti­tled mean girls and boys — would-be Slytherins. Although the school was a place of learn­ing and growth, the world, with all its con­flicts, was omnipresent. Peo­ple died, con­spir­a­cies were always present — grow­ing up, for Talia, was never pre­sented as an entirely safe haven.

What I did not like, par­tic­u­larly, was that the book did not end. By that I mean I did not know Arrows of the Queen was the first book in a con­tin­u­ing series. Per­haps I have been spoiled by read­ing too many romances but there was no con­clu­sion to Talia’s story. If I had known that, my expec­ta­tions might have been dif­fer­ent. Also, and maybe I was expect­ing a shape shifter or some­thing, I kept think­ing the love of Talia’s life was going to be her horse-companion Rolan. Not so far. Ah well. Would I rec­om­mend this book? Yes, whole­heart­edly, to a lover of high fan­tasy espe­cially. It is beau­ti­fully writ­ten and absorb­ing. For me, it just was not the sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion I “expected”. So that makes it hard to grade. For me, a B, for some­one else, prob­a­bly an A. I will pass it along to my 20 year-old daugh­ter: I have no doubt she will enjoy it very much.

Janet Webb