Sad/mad gay wizards doing sad/mad gay wizard things.

First two novels were interesting if a little uneven — the last novel in this trilogy is so poorly written that it makes me wish I had never read any of it.

Very grim… There are a bunch of Herald Mages running around at the start of this series which begs the question: “What’s going to happen to all of the Herald Mages?”

…

I’m sad to inform my earlier self that nothing interesting happens to those Herald-Mages (they get killed by a random mage we learn about 98% through the trilogy).

The way that no one acknowledges that there are only 3 Herald-Mages left when the fourth dies is baffling. When Savil and Vanyel are the only two Herald-Mages left and Savil asks for Vanyel’s help protecting herself and he brushes her off, it’s beyond stupid.

This isn’t the sort of book I would have chosen to read just like that and reading through it hasn’t convinced me to read more Lackey.

It’s not all bad but so little of these books works for me and the depiction of Vanyel is so offensive at times that I just can’t with this trilogy.

Although, it’s a testament to the skills of the hosts of the Shelved By Genre podcast that they can take a trilogy like this and produce hours upon hours of interesting discussion despite how uneven and “of its time” it is. Seeing them excel at this makes me want to be more media literate.