Mercedes Lackey

The family of a thirteen year old girl in a repressive, patriarchal, farming society wants to marry her. She doesn't want to get married. She wants to get away, read books and live adventures and become one of the Heralds of the Queen, with their fabulous intelligent horses. She runs away and finally joins a training institution for young heralds, where she is valued and accepted. So far so good. I love coming of age fantasies, and this is the classic farmboy story, well, farmgirl in this case.

However, once our heroine Talia gets to the heralds' Collegium, we have to realize that Mercedes Lackey is an unsubtle writer. Everything comes too easy for Talia. She is the chosen one for the most important destiny, everyone adores her even though she doesn't socialize with anybody, her psychic horse is the best, she has a stronger mental link with her horse than anyone... As the Queen's own herald, she is expected to civilize the young princess, also know as the Brat, so that she (the Brat) can also be chosen by one of the psychic horses as a companion, which is a prerequisite for becoming heir to the throne. With some basic common-sense discipline Talia accomplishes this easily, which makes us wonder why the queen or someone else had not bothered before.

And everything is like that. I don't have anything against wish-fulfillment coming of age fantasy, Quite the contrary, I like it. But the writing here was a bit too unsubtle for me. For a better writer with similar themes and target audience, I'd suggest Tamora Pierce.

One remarkable thing about this book is that, even though it was written before it was fashionable to have it in YA fantasies, it depicts same-sex relationships between the characters, which is more or less accepted among the heralds but not so much in the outside society. The main character is heterosexual, though. Also, more attention is paid to her sexual life than in other similar young adult coming of age fantasies. Talia tries several times to have sex with a boy she likes. Bizarrely, they are unable to do that, because every time they try to have sex one of them falls asleep. Maybe the author was trying for cute here, but it comes across as a bit ridiculous. Either describe your characters having sex or don't, but having two teenagers repeatedly trying to have sex and being unable to do so because they fall asleep is just silly.

So it's not like I disliked this. I read the whole book. It was easy reading. But it could have been done better.… (more)