Matthew Hunter

The Stone of Farewell suffers from the usual problems of a middle book in a trilogy; the characters are caught midway between their youth and their maturity, the plots of evil seem ascendant, and neither the beginning nor the end are entirely satisfactory. Still, this is by no means a poor example. Simon’s quest to recover the sword Thorn from beneath the Rimmer’s tree has succeeded, at the cost of some lives and much trouble.

Arrows of the Queen is probably Mercedes Lackey’s first published work, or close to it, and that shows; although it’s well written for a first novel, it has the rough edges of inexperience, and a certain naive simplicity that renders it eminently suitable for children (really, young teenagers) and sometimes less engrossing for adults. All her works tend to have a touch of those qualities, but Arrows of the Queen is an explicitly escapist fantasy: a young girl’s dream of magical horses to cure her loneliness and carry her away from all her troubles.

Vanyel Ashkevron, Herald-Mage of Valdemar, has faced the worst that the world can throw at him. Karsite demons, enemy mages, creatures from the Pelagirs; he has faced and defeated them all. The bards he once aspired to join now sing songs of his exploits to a rapt nation. Young women worship his image while fearing to approach a legend. Even his teacher, Savil, acknowledges that Vanyel’s talents have exceeded her own in many areas.

Having made their reputation as independent mercenaries, Tarma and Kethry set out to advance their careers by joining an established mercenary company. Their hope is simple enough: work hard, rise up through the ranks, and eventually, attract the attention of a noble with land to grant and some need that only Tarma and Kethry can soothe. For values of soothing that involve swords and sorcery, of course. As with all of Lackey’s Valdemar novels, the characters end up finding what they were looking for.

Valentine Michael Smith was the first human born on Mars, and shortly thereafter the crew of the first exploration vessel to Mars died, leaving the infant in the hands of Martians. As a young adult, Michael is discovered, ‘rescued’, and brought back to earth - where he unknowingly causes a storm of political turmoil by being the only living heir of a huge corporation - and the potential ‘owner’ of Mars itself.

By The Sword, sometimes called Kerowyn’s Tale, is the first of what I call the Heraldic Biographies – by which I mean stand-alone novels describing an individual Herald’s life from the moment of being Chosen to the completion of their life’s main adventure. Kerowyn’s story substantially predates the rest, and ends up being vital to later events. But first, who exactly is Kerowyn? Simple: the granddaughter of Kethry (from the Vows and Honor sequence), Kerowyn is the eldest daughter of a minor noble whose marriage to Kethry’s only utterly brainless daughter was his one and only big lucky break.

Startide Rising picks up about 200 years after Sundiver left off. The first mostly-dolphin starship crew is assembled and sent on a survey mission. Upon finding a huge derelict fleet of unknown origin and sending a message home about it, several hostile races hound the small survey craft until she crashes in the ocean of a metal-rich waterworld. Apparently, the hostiles are all quasi-fanatical races who believe in the eventual return of the Progenitors, the race or races who began the practice of Uplift.

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenantare composed of Lord Foul’s Bane, The Illearth War, and The Power That Preserves. Thomas Covenant finds his world turned upside down when he contracts leprosy and his wife divorces him, taking their son with her. Having managed to survive this experience, but never really recover emotionally beyond it, Covenant is universally ostracized by his community. One day he inexplicably finds himself transported to another world, a dream world that is somehow so full of life that his leprosy starts to fade.

Across known space, Humanity is a rare example of a species that achieved sentience and a starfaring civilization without the evident help of a Patron race. In the eyes of some aliens, this makes them unique; in others, it makes them outcasts. Humans have earned themselves a tenuous status in Galactic society, however, as they had already Uplifted two other races - chimpanzees and dolphins - by the time of First Contact.

Anita Blake and Jean-Claude struggle to sort out their love lives as a rogue pack of vampires moves into town, determined to take over the reins from the new Master of the City – and not incidentally, to leave a few corpses for the police to investigate in the process. What sounds like the plot of a novel is only another day in Anita’s harried life, and it doesn’t get any easier from there.