rachelmanija | Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey in fifteen minutes

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Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey in fifteen minutes

Before I begin ragging on this book, I should note that although I cannot call it good, it's pretty entertaining. I would not hesitate to recommend it for salon reading, as long as you can either call up your inner twelve-year-old at will or else enjoy a good inner snark-fest.

Also, it is very heartfelt-- very, very, very heartfelt-- and was apparently written at a time when very few gay characters ever appeared in fantasy, let alone lengthy pleas for gay rights, so I give Lackey major points for that. Even though, out of all the gay men I've ever met, and given my history with theatre, the entertainment industry, gay rights, and AIDS education, I've met quite a few, I have never met anyone who resembled any of Lackey's gay men.

I now present Vanyel in fifteen minutes!

Vanyel: I am a sensitive, gorgeous, and musical young man. Why is everyone so mean to me? Woe! Did I mention that I have fabulous dress sense and exquisite silver eyes?

(Vanyel’s father sneers)

(Vanyel’s brother jeers)

(Vanyel’s evil martial arts instructor breaks Vanyel’s arm)

Vanyel’s father: I’m sending you off to your butch aunt’s school. Maybe she’ll make a man of you. If that’s even possible.

Vanyel: I think I’ll wear my taupe breeches with my eggshell shirt. Oops, almost forgot: woe!

~~Tylenol~~ Tylendel: Hi, I’m a gorgeous young student of your butch aunt’s and I am incredibly gifted at magic and I have a telepathic horsie. Also, I’m gay. Are you gay too?

Vanyel: Dude, I think I am!

~~Tylenol~~ Tylendel: Excellent! Let’s be gay together!

Everyone at Vanyel’s butch aunt’s school: Vanyel is sensitive, gorgeous, delicate, musical, misunderstood, and a fashion plate. ~~He owns the complete catalogue of Judy Garland on remastered CD.~~ I am totally shocked that he’s gay, even though every other gay character in this book also fits that description! However, there is nothing wrong with being gay! Have fun, boys!

~~Tylenol~~ Tylendel: My twin brother whom I have a telepathic bond with and whom I once telepathically eavesdropped on while he was having sex which awakened my magic powers—not to imply telepathic twincest— not that there’s anything wrong with that— was murdered! Woe! Vanyel, mind if I leech off of your un-awakened magic to supplement my own to get revenge?

Vanyel: That wouldn’t awaken my magic, would it? Cause for some reason I don’t want that to happen.

~~Tylenol~~ Tylendel: Not a chance!

Vanyel: OK!

(~~Tylenol~~ Tylendel leeches off Vanyel’s magic)

(Evil guy fights back)

(Telepathic horsie dies)

(~~Tylenol~~ Tylendel dies)

(Vanyel’s magic awakens so he is now more powerful than anyone in the world; he attempts suicide; he keels over from woe, and also magical overload)

(Telepathic horsie # 2 bonds with Vanyel)

Vanyel: Go away. I’m busy dying here.

Vanyel’s butch aunt: Even our best aromatherapy has failed. Better send him to my friends, the super-sensitive soul-bonded gay mages, Moondance and Starwind.

(Rachel is not making this up)

Moondance and Starwind: Hello! We are gorgeous, sensitive gay mages. And we are here to tell you that it is OK to be gay. Even some animals are gay, so it is totally natural, healthy, and fun.

Vanyel: Go away. I will never love again.

Moondance: Vanyel, let me tell you my tragic backstory that I never tell anyone.

(Moondance weeps in a sensitive manner.)

Moondance: By the way, it’s only possible to have one great love in your life and yours is dead, so you are totally right that you will never love again. But don’t despair! You can still, you know, have pets and things.

Vanyel: Agony! Much more painful than yours!

Moondance: I think you kind of hurt my feelings.

(Moondance weeps in a sensitive manner.)

(Vanyel runs away; sees a dragon getting the drop on some people; angsts until the dragon bites the head off an old man; blows up the dragon.)

Vanyel: I now realize that with great power comes great responsibility. Also, I suck.

(Random evil mage suddenly appears and molests Vanyel)

(Vanyel blows up random evil mage)

Moondance et all: Congratulations! You’re a Herald!

Vanyel: On to the next book—of WOE!

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That is so very Vanyel. And awesome. You win at life!

pssst. I have extra bookmooch points. Are you in need of volumes 2 and 3?

I think

rachelmanija is definitely in need of books 2 and 3.

(Even with all its many, many flaws, there is something about this trilogy and her first trilogy that pull me along to the end. Her other books are more of a slogging contest, if I can finish them at all. I think she stopped being edited somewhere along the way.)

There is something deeply compelling about those first two trilogies--I still reread them when I'm ill, I just feel kinda guilty about it. I heard through the grapevine that she met Larry Dixon at the very end of the Vanyel trilogy and started cowriting with him (uncredited) on the books about Elspeth. That's when they started to lose their cracked entertainment value for me.

I read Vanyel when sick as well. I would feel guilty, but there's something oddly comforting/cracktatic about all that misery when you're miserable.

re: Dixon. That's interesting. Certainly explains the shift from crack-tainment to whatever.

However, I will say my best non-ill Lackey experience in recent years was reading one of her one-offs with a group of friends... out loud... selecting sections at random... in bad accents... or in foreign languages if the reader could translate on the fly. Any words we couldn't translate were pineapple.

I'm not quite sure what was going on in the plot, but what's really important was that Show Tunes Lackey was quite jocular, French Lackey was either about true love or dinner, and I think Swedish Chef Lackey was making a pineapple salad.

That's around the time I lost my liking for them, too. I don't remember which one, all I remember is that the bad guy is a furry mage.

Yeah, that's about the time I stopped reading them too.

Badguy: I get to run around naked because I am furred just that sexy and evil! Also I am going to now kill someone's telepathic bird and laugh mockingly because I am just that evil!

Badguy: I run around naked, covered only by fur except for my crotch, so I can FLAUNT my MALENESS!

After picturing that, I couldn't take him seriously as a villain. :D

Hahaha Mornelithe Falconsbane ha.

(^ totally coherent commentary!)

I totally memorized one of that guy's ridiculous speeches in high school and was going around calling people "rash birdman" (RASH BIRDMAN) and telling them how "starting today, you will have a new name for me... 'MAAAASTERRRR.'" And I instinctively did this sort of James-from-Pokemon voice for him.

I totally see James! XD

I'm the same way. I'm not sure I finished any of the other trilogies; I even had trouble with some standalones.

Yes. I was reading Rachel's totally justified snark, admitting to myself that yes, I'd read the books at age fourteen or so, and then suddenly thinking "Oh, god, the scary part is that this trilogy is among the best stuff she's written!"

Although, to be fair, I'd also class Tarma & Kethry and the Di Tregarde stuff as a fun read. It didn't get dire until after that.

The funny thing is I enjoyed the Vanyal books the first time, enough to read more of her stuff util I started feeling like I'd eaten too much ice cream. I've never had the urge to reread anything else in that world except the Tarma and Kethry books. Maybe some of that is just that I love so much that they can be friends and life partners without having to be romantic *and* it doesn't stop the one who wants to from having a spouse and family. And conversely the S & F don't stop her from still doing her life's work.

I do still reread the Tregarde books, the SERRAted edge ones, and the mage ones (the ones with Eric Banyon) for comfort reads, though I think the mag series has probably hit the point of inevitable decline.

Mage series, not mag. Stupid fingers.

Maybe the next time I need a hair cut.

Now I think I understand why there are so many gay men who are secretly weepy teenage girls in fanfic.

Now do you see why these books are worthy of bookmockery?

I can't reread the last part of this book, though, because the Taleydras completely make me want to bring out the napalm and raze their precious little sanctuary. RARRRRRGH. There need to be more spork-wielding cranky gay mages.

I am deeply convinced that Starwind and Moondance are utterly evil psycho elf-twins from Hell. The whole coming-to-resemble-your-lover was so horribly creepy I was expecting them to turn out to be working for the Bad Guy. I kept waiting for the scene when Vanyel wakes up to discover his limbs curiously immobile and - ye kami, I just realised their initials are S&M.

Evil. Definitely evil.

Oh, it would have been brilliant if she'd gone that direction. Which is why, of course, she couldn't.

An utterly brilliant and spot-on recap of the book.

*sprlorf*

But totally spot on about twelve year olds. I have these on my shelves for school, and they hit those girl readers right in the chitlins. (So far, the boys--even the ones who like fantasy--can't stand them as they all to a reader hate Vanyel)

When I was a twelve-year-old, I loved Mercedes Lackey. But holy crap did I ever hate Vanyel.

I distinctly remember my dad giving me my first Lackey book (Arrow's whatsit) in his office at the library.

It was the same visit where I was playing with some (admittedly awesome) Sesame Street colorforms.

I really wish I hadn't missed my window on Lackey. I would have eaten those books with a spoon when I was twelve.

Heh. I found Lackey when I was about 15, and read exactly one (there were no gay boys, although violet eyes and telepathic horsies were in evidence), and 15 was just barely too old to be able to swallow the shtick. Barely! (Also I found the covers embarrassing.)

> Agony! Much more painful than yours!

Boy knows his Broadway catalogue. He will go far.

:laughs: Just not got the Broadway link.

Aiee! Vanyel, the Musical. That works---entirely too well.

Them and early Anne McCaffrey: all about the Cinderella fantasy. I am poor and sad and neglected until people discover THE GLORY THAT IS ME!

And, yeah, I ate them up in my 20s. So sue me.

Oh, thank you, I am pretty sure I liked them when I was 16 and was feeling embarrassed by all the people who grew out of them at 12.

I don't think the Vanyel trilogy came out until I was sixteen or so, so yeah, later for me too. Then again, at twelve, I wouldn't have read books with a gay protagonist. I was an obediently brainwashed child until about fifteen.

Checking the chronology, I gave up on the Valdemar books as they were released in 1997, when I was 20, when those dreadful post-(second)-magical-disaster books with "Owl" in the title were released. I personally still have a soft spot for the (second)-magical-disaster series, the ones with "Storm" in the title.

And I've still dipped back into her work since then.

(I think I found them late, when I was in high school, for whatever that's worth.)

I read the Owl books a couple of years ago when I had a horrible cold, and was mostly amazed at the utter lack of any real conflict or danger to the main characters, and how everything bad that happened was fixed and everything turned out OK. I never once felt that the enemy incursion that was supposed to be the threatening force overhanging everything was ever going to be a serious problem.

I just read the ones that I've ready last year at 29ish. I enjoyed some, others... not so much. I don't think I would have liked them much at all at 12.

Hey, I read them at 45 and thought No so dusty. But it was in Tokyo and that screws with your English-processing ability. I'd probably have hated them if I'd been ~~sane~~ twelve.

*applause*

You know, cola really *hurts* coming out of one's nose.

But it was totally worth it. I needed a laugh today!

OMG, I think I'm dying of laughter here.

Hee. I did love those books when I was twelve or so. And they really were the first time I'd ever read anything with a sympathetic gay character, or for that matter run into ANYTHING remotely gay-friendly, so they had a big and positive effect on my growing up. :) Plus I met some great people through the Mercedes Lackey mailing list (man, I was such a child then o_o). I can't read her books anymore, though.

woo! that's awesome. (and startlingly just like the books which have no awesome at all.)

Oh, Vanyel. The angst!1!!

I first discovered Mercedes Lackey when that book was pressed into my hands by a gay man. I never trusted his taste in books ever again.

By the way, it’s only possible to have one great love in your life and yours is dead, so you are totally right that you will never love again. But don’t despair! You can still, you know, have pets and things.

*snorfle* Oh, you so do not want to know the angsty fanfic I secretly wrote in my head before I even knew there was fanfic when I was 13 and read these.

You have to read books 2 and 3 and report! 3 has even more Vanyel angst.

Seconded-- this was splendid.

Also, I missed Lackey when I was twelve, but I've always known that, as a person interested in all things queer, I really should read Vanyel. But, um, I really really didn't want to.

See? You are providing a valuable public service!

(Also, that was really hysterically funny. And the (Rachel is not making this up) was really necessary because... um. Starwind and Moondance???)

lol! I gobbled up the three Vanyel books, with much judicious skimming. Guilty pleasure or what.

I've never wanted to read another Lackey and I won't go back to these. But I did enjoy them, despite themselves or myself or whatever.

:::applauds wildly:::

And it only gets worse for poor Vanyel, you know. But it's okay! He's totally reincarnated as a magical telepathic horsie!

As a horsie? I vaguely remember that he ends up reincarnated as a magical telepathic forest instead, with the spirit of his One Twoo Wuv residing within him, but it's been long enough ago that I'm extremely hazy on the details.

Reincarnated as... a forest?!?

I must track down the rest of this trilogy. The crack, it compels me.

Yeah, something like that. The forest and the ghost of his One Twoo Wuv show up in one of the Elspeth books later on, but that may be the one I quit reading on.

I've only picked up random books, totally out of order, but... I believe there's another incarnation and reincarnation for those two later, even AFTER the forest/spirit thing... Because a love like that can never, never end. Ever.

Oh good lord. I think I'd get highly irritated with anyone after the first century or so, and the thought of spending eternity together...?

And they both died so young, ya know? That's like, not a lot of life experience to fuel millennia of Happy Togetherness, however angsty those first 18 or so years were...

I so eagerly anticipate Sanzo's reaction to being p/reincarnated as a forest. Planted next to Gojyo the forest.

I think Sanzo would evolve some sort of biological warfare adaptation pretty damn quick.

Don't some plants produce poison from their roots that kills all the other plants in the area? Like that, only more fire.

Exactly!

"You can name a shrub after me. Something prickly and hard to eradicate."

a love like that can never, never end. Ever.

No matter *how much* you wish that it would...

Alas, I can say with certainty that there isn't another incarnation on-screen.

(They stop being spirits in the last "Storm" book, but it's not said whether they reincarnate or go to an afterlife.)

But that's what I was thinking of, though... I mean they "come back" in that book (as humanoid ghosts this time? or am I confused?) and then there's the "choice" they have to make at the end--which to my way of thinking is really a choice between one kind of not-really-deadness and another...

They've been ghosts since the Vanyel series, they're brought out of the Forest, they get un-stuck, and then they make a choice, but we don't know what their choice is, hence my "on-screen" comment.

I can't believe I didn't actually have to look it up to know this. But I did confirm it.

His ghost is bound to a forest, more precisely.

And that of his One Twoo Luv (subsequent series spoilers elided), as well.

No, it was everybody else who was reincarnated as a magical telepathic horsie; if you're a herald that's what you get.

I have to say I do like the book By The Sword for the simple reason that its protagonist meets the Heralds and goes OMG WHY ARE ALL YOU PEOPLE WEARING WHITE LIKE BIG STUPID WALKING TARGETS KILL ME PLZ.

Yes. I also liked that. And she never does wear the white.

Wearing white around horses.

That _is_ a fantasy!

It's Magical! Dirt Resistant! White (TM).

Except when it isn't, for the purposes of dramatic emphasis.

Hah! Yes! And there was Sex That Did Not Have To Lead To Angst Even If Twu Luv WAS Involved, Hey We're Adults And We Have Needs But That Doesn't Mean We're Going To Fall On Our Swords When We Can't Meet For A Decade Afterwards.

And there was actual military-ness and campaigning, even if it did have the usual Mercedes Lackey spitshine. By the Sword is great fun.

Oh, man. I need to reread these. Too bad they're still at my parents house - somehow, they didn't make the first (or second, or third) cut of books getting brought over to the new apartment.

I'd forgotten just how ridiculously fun Vanyel is!

OMG. *snarf* You are the second person today who should have a beverage warning on LJ. I almost killed my computer (again) b/c of you! ;)

*applause*

keels over of woe had me whooping with laughter!

That was **perfect**! :):):)

I enjoyed your retelling more than I enjoyed reading the book years ago. Thank you.

I should note that although I cannot call it good, it's pretty entertaining.

Amazing, isn't it? It's horrible, but in a fashion you can follow along and enjoy instead of drag yourself through (as a lot of people have mentioned the other books were like) and when I was 15-16? It all seemed so deep.

Just wait until you get to the line about wanting to keep your gay lover in your pocket. =)

Isn't there a Rule against quoting Sondheim in a review of Lackey? I'm sure I've seen one someplace.

---L.

*dies* It was an awesome summary even before the Into the Woods nod. Ohh, those books. (I'm also in the camp of folks who have a soft spot for this trilogy, having read it when I was much younger, but the mockery is still called for. ^^)

You so, so need books 2 and 3 now. 2 is more tedious than entertaining, but it's necessary background for the awesome emofest that is 3.

Hell, yes! I love those books.

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Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey in fifteen minutes

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Why it's not a good idea to REMEMBER your past lives

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