The Heralds of Valdemar series

Vkandis the Unsubtle

I like to there's a bunch of entities floating around that can be more, less and/or differently powerful to one-another.

Whoops, true. I wrote Winds when I meant Storms. My bad.

Do Tarma and Kethry deal with gods? I remember their dealings with the one demon (who was considered something of a freak for actually liking the human world instead of running back to his own plane of existence as soon as possible), but I don't recall any gods. Either way, if God Needs Prayer Badly is in effect, then the two gods we see having the biggest effect makes sense, given that they've got entire cultures worshiping them exclusively, which is more than we see than any other deity.

About gods being on call — the whole point is that they're not. One guaranteed way to make sure they don't intervene on your behalf is to sit around and wait for them to intervene on your behalf.

The "children of my other self" quote is to Tarma in Oathbreakers, when she calls up the Star-Eyed to get reassurance that the Herald-Prince is actually as good a bloke as he appears to be.

It seems to me that this quote implies a side-effect to way Gods Need Prayer Badly works in Velgarth—if you break off a sect and start worshiping a goddess differently and assigning her different attributes, she might actually become different when dealing with your people. Sure, Kal'enel says "my other self," but she also expresses a vague unfamiliarity with how Companions work, as if she's only seeing and understanding one for the first time in that scene. Seems like she's recognizing her "other self's" handiwork at one remove, like even if they are the same being at one level, at another they have separate identities that aren't fully interchangeable.

We see this more directly with the totem spirits of the northern tribes, mostly in Owlknight. Each tribe has its own totem, but tribes also merge and split all the time. The totem spirits of a split tribe might still be the same being, might split themselves into separate beings, or might be two aspects of one being that are still connected. Darian's party encounters the remnants of the Red Fox tribe, an offshoot of Snow Fox, and send them back to their relatives by fabricating a dream in which the Red Fox spirit turns white and shows them the way. The tribe leader says that this dream actually happened, and they'd already encountered the actual Snow Fox spirit.

The Red Fox could be a Snow Fox "offspring," or still part of the Snow Fox itself. In general, the totem spirits are more hands-on than Vkandis and Kal'enel, but also clearly less powerful, because they're more numerous and worshiped by smaller groups.

I found this thread, re-read it, and more thoughts occurred to me.

Are the circumstances surrounding the second Cataclysm common knowledge in Valdemar and Karse? I'm not actually sure anyone beyond the ruling council and Heralds knows just what happened, or that the gods were involved at all. (Even the particulars of the downfall of the Corrupt Church and elevation of Solaris are probably just rumor and speculation among the Karsite common folk.) For most people, it's probably just "Heralds doing Herald things, and good on them for keeping the scary magic from getting any worse." No need to bring the gods into it, or mess with comfortable religious practices.

That reminds me: Valdemarans are already used to having powerful elites act on their behalf, in the form of the Heralds—but only when they're needed. Heralds are only soldiers when the Guard is not enough; they are only judges when the regular judiciary can't resolve the issue. Even if the common folk heard about the gods' intervention, it may be taken (by most, at least) as just another case of the powerful using their power wisely.

Regarding which gods are responsible for the Companions: if Valdemaran lore is to be believed, it's all of them. King Valdemar prayed to every god he'd ever heard of, including Kal'enel and Vkandis, but also to all of the others. (Plus he used some magic of his own.) Whichever gods were actually around to hear him, the Companions were their answer.

I don't think that the full story of the Cataclysm is widely known, but less because of any intent on the part of the gods or the rulers of the various nations involved and more because it's a sprawling story whose origins go back thousands of years. To the average citizen of Valdemar, the understanding is probably "some crazy magic stuff happened, but the Heralds protected us, with the help of those crazy magic Hawkbrothers, some Karsite priests (who everyone knows are mages), some more mages that came from way out east (and apparently rule Hardorn now)". So they probably think of it entirely in mundane magical terms (well, as mundane as magic ever gets for modern Valdemarians, anyway) rather than in terms of divine intervention.

The Karsites and the Hawkbrothers are much more used to thinking in terms of deific influence to begin with, so it probably wouldn't throw them for too much of a loop to hear that their gods were directly and personally involved — though the Karsites might do a double-take at "no, I literally had a conversation with him" if they weren't too busy declaring all those involved Saints Of Vkandis. The reaction of the easterners is probably down more to individuals than anything else — the Empire was generally a pretty diverse place and the army was deliberately a cross-section of the lot of them.

Edited by NativeJovian on Sep 13th 2018 at 8:29:06 AM

I expect you're right. I left the Hawkbrothers out of my thinking completely, because I'm sure they know the whole story and consider it perfectly in keeping with their religion. The Owl trilogy lays out what happens afterward—more of them ally with Valdemar and begin cleaning up the Wild Magic left over from the mage storms. There are some passages in those books that hint that not all of them agree with this course of action; a solid conservative minority believe they should continue being mysterious forest guardians who warn once and shoot anyone who doesn't run away. But most of them jump right in to the new reality, realizing that the more they help now, the better and more effective their magic will be when it returns to full strength.

After 12 years and 11 books about Mags and his family, I just found out that we're finally diving into a new time period with Beyond, first book of the Founding of Valdemar trilogy/series! I'm more excited that I thought I would be to finally get the whole story of Baron-turned-King Valdemar and his people, and their trek across the continent to flee the Empire and found the kingdom.

Jeez, I didn't realize there had been so many Mags books. I think I read the first two trilogies? They weren't terrible but they didn't super grab me either so I sort of stopped following them. I wonder if I can get them at my local library...

A trilogy about the founding of Valdemar sounds interesting, though. It'll be interesting to see what the actual original nature of the dispute between Baron Valdemar and the Empire is, given that the modern Valdemarian version is "we don't really remember but it was definitely bad" and the Imperial version is "no one bothered to look up the records but it was probably just a provincial idiot overreacting".

Yep, the Collegium Chronicles stretched out to five books, then we had the Herald Spy and Family Spies trilogies. The latter is more about Mags and Amily’s kids than Mags himself; he’s a supporting character in The Hills Have Spies but is barely in Eye Spy. I haven’t read Spy, Spy Again yet. Getting some different protagonists does shake up the rut the books were falling into, to an extent.

I really need to read Mage Storms again; I don’t remember enough about the Eastern Empire in general. I’ve been listening to the audiobook versions of the novels which have been made in the last few years, but Winds, Storms, and Last Herald-Mage are conspicuously missing from the lineup so far.

Which is interesting, since (Apart from the Arrows trilogy with Talia, which I think was the very first?), those seem some of the foundational material of the 'verse.

I remember getting into the series years and years ago with the Arrows and Last Herald-Mage trilogies, when I was still a preteen.

Edited by PointMaid on Mar 11th 2021 at 10:29:56 AM

I would definitely consider Arrows, Winds, and Storms to be the "core story," as it were, of the setting. Mage Wars and Last Herald-Mage set up parts of the backstory, the Owl trilogy is a sort of epilogue, and the others fill in details and interesting side-stories around that core. Up until 2003, when Exile's Valor was published and the series went on hiatus, anyway. 2008 until now has been the story of Mags, doing its own thing.

As far as I can tell (my library had every digital audiobook for a while last year, but then some became unavailable again), every "classic" pre-2003 book has been recorded except for those three trilogies. None of the "new" books have.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Mar 11th 2021 at 12:06:06 PM

I tuned out after the "core" series, as it got a lot fluffier.

Speaking of the audiobooks, I haven't been especially impressed with most of the narrators (Amy Landon did a decent job with By the Sword), but I'm about two-thirds of the way through Brightly Burning, and Daniel Thomas May is excellent. His pacing is proper, his character voices are varied, and he doesn't misplace his emphasis or inflections—many narrators emphasize words that were obviously (to me at least) not how the author intended the sentence to be read.

That seems like a very strange decision to make. Why bother with the change, when Baron Valdemar is already established and the difference doesn't really seem to matter at the end of the day? I find it hard to envision any plot-relevant reason that they would need to be a Duke instead of a Baron for the story to work.

In fact, it makes less sense than before. Barons are border lords, historically the most involved with actual defense of the realm; the title means “warrior.” Dukes, on the other hand, are the highest rank below royalty, and many are royal family members themselves. Valdemar as a “tiny, bucolic Duchy that focuses mostly on horse breeding” would make more sense if it were a border Barony. Kordas would be far from the centers of power and more likely to be at odds with the Imperial Throne. I would expect a Duke to be, if not in agreement with the Emperor, more inclined to attempt reform from within than to take his people and run.

Finally, I've read Beyond. Despite my enthusiasm I didn't get it until my December birthday and then slotted it into my to-be-read in the last month.

It's good! As hoped for, an excellent change of pace from The Mags Show, and all my above questions are answered. Kordas can have a high rank and still be on the outs with the Imperial hierarchy because it's an empire—there are whole kingdoms that still have Kings contained within it, and they're not necessarily close to the Emperor either. And he gets demoted to Baron in the end anyway; it wasn't an oversight. Meanwhile, being a Duke does help him move freely about the palace and plan his people's escape.

There is some hinting about Kordas's backstory to be explored in the rest of the trilogy.^* Or however many books this ends up being. The next one is called Into the West and it has cover art already. He is clearly someone worthy of being the first person Chosen as a Herald, and just as clearly would dispute that characterization of himself. It'll be interesting. And the seeds for Valdemar's long and mostly unrecognized partnership with the vrondi elementals are planted.

My biggest complaint is the ending; after chapter after chapter of buildup and plans and "here's the tightrope we need to walk to keep the Emperor from killing/enslaving us all"—the end is rushed through in a chapter and a lot of the climax is hurried, when it could have benefited from more of Lackey's scene-setting prose.

It was definitely bad. The Empire at its most decadently warmongeringly Imperial self, conscripting whole towns and areas to the wars, emptying even the Imperial Palace of human servants and replacing them with enslaved vrondi bound into cloth golems, also binding a young Earth Elemental and bleeding it for magical power... but they can't look up the records because it was those same vrondi making them, and they ally with Kordas and carry off or destroy everything they can. And then Kordas frees the Earth Elemental and it and its fellows destroy the entire Imperial City. No wonder no one remembers. And no wonder the Empire's collective character is very different in Mage Storms, after an experience like that. Meanwhile if anyone remembers Kordas at all, it would be his "provincial idiot" act.

Damn, sounds like I need to get on that myself.

Nice Epic NPC Man reference.

Just realized that Into the West was scheduled for June last I checked. Amazon now says it's due in November, and the Penguin Random House page that's top of the Google results just leads to a 404 error. I wonder what happened.

Been on a Valdemar kick recently. Ended up rereading the Alberich and Skif books, then started on the Collegium series again, which wasn't intentional but ended up being mostly spy stuff back to back.

Having that comparison in mind, I sort of realized that the main problem with the Collegium books is that there are five of them instead of three. I just finished the second one, but it feels like the story just... takes longer. It isn't really better or worse, just longer. It took two books to do what could have been done in one, or maybe one and a half. Mostly that's a problem when the books were actually coming out, as there was a long an unsatisfying wait between books, but now I'm just getting them back to back from the library so it's not much of an issue.

Neither ending of the first two Collegium books (book one where Mags rescues Bear after he's taken hostage, and book two where he kills the enemy agent sneaking into the palace grounds) really felt like a proper satisfying climax, but a lot (though by no means all) of Valdemar books have that problem. Skif's book in particular, of the ones I've reread recently, has a bit of an anticlimactic ending. Usually that happens because it's the first or second book of a trilogy so it doesn't feel like the proper ending to a story because it's not (in Skif's case, it leads into the Arrows trilogy, where Lord Orthallen finally gets outed as Evil Chancellor).

But yeah, I'm generally enjoying the Collegium series more this time around. I think I've read the whole thing before, but only once, and quite a while ago, so I only vaguely recall it. I like the fact that Mags' two best friends are a bard and a healer, rather than another herald — not that there's anything wrong with heralds, but the other schools don't get nearly as much attention. Bards in particular seem to get shortchanged. They've been around since the beginning of the series, but the only one I can remember offhand is Bard Stefen... who was important because he was Vanyel's lover, not because he was a bard.

Edited by NativeJovian on Sep 5th 2022 at 3:55:41 PM

I stopped reading after the Owl trilogy. It just got repetitive and felt like the heart wasn't in the stories any more.

More importantly, when the author(s) started putting out things like the Collegium series, I realized they had no idea where Valdemar was going and did the thing all long-running series seem to do: go up their own buttholes and root around to explain things about characters that nobody asked for, like Disney and Solo.

Maybe Valdemar has moved on since then, but it had already lost me.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2022 at 4:13:22 AM

That doesn't seem quite right. While the Arrow through Owl trilogies definitely form a single overarching narrative, the series has always done huge jumps back and forth in the timeline. The Last Herald-Mage trilogy was the second thing written in the setting (after Arrows, before everything else) and takes place hundreds of years prior, while the Mage Wars trilogy was released simultaneously with the Mage Storms trilogy and takes place thousands of years before anything else.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's probably fairer to say that you like the coherent single storyline of "modern" Valdemar more than the stuff outside that particular narrative arc, rather than that they ran out of ideas after Owls and started writing about dumb shit instead.

That said, after the Owls trilogy, there was a stand-alone novel about an extremely powerful Firestarter that's probably the most tragic thing in the series since Vanyel, and what is effectively a prequel trilogy to Arrows (though it was actually written as a one-off book first and the two more books were written afterwards as a prequel to that). After that, having written basically a novel a year (sometimes two!) from 1987 to 2003, Lackey took a break from the series until 2008, when the Collegium Chronicle started. That went for eleven total books (though separated into three sequences: the five-book Collegium Chronicles themselves, the Herald-Spy trilogy about Mags as an adult, and the Family Spies trilogy about... well, his family). That finally wrapped up in 2020, and 2021 started a new series about the founding of Valdemar, though I'm not sure how many books it's expected to be.

I very much liked The Last Herald-Mage, even given its tragic ending, because it was so obviously written back when Lackey was in her prime with the series. The Mage Wars trilogy was a trip downhill from the absolutely spellbinding Black Gryphon to the paint-by-numbers White Gryphon and then the determinedly mediocre Silver Gryphon.

One problem that I've noted throughout Lackey's writing is her habit of completely removing the agency of characters that we've come to know and love in favor of Passing the Torch to their offspring. It can be done well, and occasionally is, but I'm not emotionally invested in Skandranon's and Amberdrake's kids... more generally, I find it difficult to become invested in the stories of the children of loving, stable families who are struggling to find their own identities.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2022 at 5:53:08 AM

Personally, I would put "her prime" as the mid-late 90s. The first three trilogies she wrote — Arrows, Last Herald-Mage, and Winds — haven't aged nearly as well as what came after. Storms is always where I thought the series really hits its stride, though it doesn't really work as a starting place because it relies so heavily on context established in earlier stuff.

One thing that did always strike me as weird, though, is the new Magic Pope Son of the Sun that shows up in Storms. The shift from the corrupt, evil Karsite church that had been running the country for centuries at that point always seemed like a big enough deal that it should have been covered in more detail somewhere, but as far as I know it wasn't. I could honestly see there being a whole trilogy just about that.

We got a lot of the context of Karse's revolution in the story as it is, and what you're saying about hoping for a spinoff is exactly the sort of thing that I broadly dislike. Every single detail of the stories doesn't need filling in and the tendency to want to do so is how we get the Star Wars Expanded Universe with its encyclopedic web of continuity and "third Stormtrooper from the left" spinoff novels... or, indeed, Solo, an unnecessary and lifeless exercise in the creative equivalent of auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Anyway, I get what you're saying about Arrows, etc., being weaker in terms of storytelling, but Talia is one of the first characters that really hit me with The Woobie feels, back in my formative years of reading fantasy fiction, and so she has a special place in my heart.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2022 at 6:45:30 AM