Baron Valdemar and his people have found a temporary haven, but it
cannot hold all of them, or for long. Trouble could follow on their
heels at any moment, and there are too many people for Crescent Lake to
support. Those who are willing to make a further trek by barge on into
the West will follow him into a wilderness depopulated by war and
scarred by the terrible magics of a thousand years ago and the Mage
Wars. But the wilderness is not as "empty" as it seems. There are
potential friends and rapacious foes...
...and someone is watching them.
496 pages
Published December 13, 2022
I've read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar novels since I was a teen, and at this point, I've read every mainline novel in the series. They're far from perfect, but they've been a part of my life for so long that it would been strange to not read any of the new novels that release. So I'm very used to the author's style of storytelling. Often there's a lot of slow build-up for the vast majority of the novel, culminating in an intense action scene right at the end, possibly ending with a bit of a cliff-hanger depending on whether there's more story to be told later.
And Into the West stays true to that storytelling style. If you know that in advance, what you get here doesn't come as any sort of surprise. But that doesn't necessarily mean the book is that great. Into the West isn't the worst Valdemar novel I've read, but it's far from the best.
Following on from the conclusion of Beyond, the previous novel in the Founding of Valdemar series (which will probably be a trilogy, but at the moment I can't say that for certain), where Baron Valdemar is in wild uncharted lands and is responsible for thousands of people, but still has to find places for everyone to settle. Thus, a significant portion of the book is just about people moving from place to place, trying to find a new home. Complete with all the details that act as a great aid to imagination but in text come across as a lot of filler. It was actually quite frustrating at times, to read so many pages and to realise that absolutely nothing happened in them.
Really, most of the story was fine, if nothing special. What I mostly will remember about this book are the parts that were bad, rather than the few that were good. Tayledras telling Valdemar that their name for a nearby river was "Ter'i'le'e," which fans of the series as a whole will recognize as the Terilee River, which I think all of us assumed was named after a future Valdemaran monarch, Queen Terilee. Instead, I guess we're supposed to assume the queen was named after a river, which was named by another culture, in a style that actually doesn't match other examples of the Tayledras language that Mercedes Lackey has given us over the years. Or the reference to Moonmoon, an Internet meme from 10 years ago. After the awkwardness of Beyond using terms like "doggo" and "pupper," it all gets difficult to take seriously.
I think the most egregious problem, though, is the timeline. For well over a decade now, the Valdemar books have included a timeline that established the founding of Valdemar to be 1000 years after a disaster known as the Cataclysm. Into the West, however, suddenly changes that and declares the Cataclysm to have taken place a mere 500 years prior to the founding. Even the book's description states that the Cataclysm was 1000 years ago, for crying out loud! The author is well-known to have made errors with the timeline before, but never one of this magnitude. Combined with other odd issues and errors, Into the West comes across as poorly done in many respects, filled with clumsy attempts to appeal to today's youth while also messing with aspects of the world of Velgarth in ways that could have easily been prevented had the author checked any wiki devoted to her writings. It's a shame, so many of the myriad small problems I had (and the gigantic one) could have been easily prevented, but more and more when it comes to Valdemar, it feels like the author just writes what she wants to write without considering how that fits into the world she's already established.
Into the West isn't bad, but it felt wholly unnecessary, a small section of a larger story that contained so little of note that it may as well have been boiled down to a few chapters in another novel instead of stretching it out to fill and entire book. It's one that, as a long-time fan, I find difficult to recommend to anyone who has even passing knowledge and affection for the series. While I definitely don't think that Mercedes Lackey should stop writing, I do wish she'd take more time and care to make sure that what she does write actually works in context. As I said earlier, this isn't the worst Valdemar novel I've read, but it's unfortunately pretty close.
No comments:
Post a Comment