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Title:Steadfast
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Historical fantasy (19th C England)
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: A dancer running from an abusive husband becomes a stage magician's assistant and discovers that he's using real magic.
Thoughts: Why do I keep reading these? I'm starting to think that Lackey's Elemental Masters series is kind of like Twinkies: a taste from your childhood that you get bouts of nostalgia for, that are kind of addictively enjoyable for the first third, but by the time you're finished, you realize they really aren't as good as you remembered and you feel dissatisfied and vaguely annoyed with yourself for doing this whole thing again.
Things that were worthwhile: there's something about the way Lackey sets up characters that I find deeply appealing. There's a certain hominess, a comfortable enumeration of the details of setting up a life. Katie is a likeable character, if a bit Mary-Sueish, and the details of how she finds herself angstily on the run and then builds herself a new family are fun.
But the characters are so ludicrously black and white that it actually gets kind of irritating. Everyone save the antagonist(s?--more on that later) has hearts of gold. Katie's husband, on the other hand, is an uncomplicatedly evil brute who doesn't stomp on puppies only because no puppies appear. Good and evil is fun and all, but an antagonist with no motivation beyond “be really really mean” isn't very interesting.
And the ending—oh, the ending. I'm not going to spoil the exact details. But there is a clear problem to be solved—something must be done about Katie's terrible husband. They propose half a dozen possible solutions, each of which would have made a more interesting book. What actually happens, though, is essentially an accident. None of the characters actually take an action that results in a resolution. It keeps them all from being bad people—the most obvious solution is to unleash some of the magic that Katie, her boss, and her love interest all have in spades. But it also completely robs all of them of any shred of agency. No one has to make hard choices, or do anything clever, and any bravery is merely reaction rather than action. It's anticlimatic and a complete betrayal of the characters.
Worse, there are the seeds of a more interesting plot that are laid and then abandoned. I increasingly get the impression that Lackey writes these in one go and no one bothers to edit them at all. Katie's parents die in a mysterious fire before the novel starts. Katie's original boss forces her into her awful marriage for reasons undisclosed. It's briefly hinted that untrained magicians can be drained of their power. Everything is set up for a terrible revelation that Katie's boss killed her parents and trapped her in a marriage so that he could drain her at his leisure. Only one problem—we never meet the damn boss. After she escapes the circus before the book starts, she never encounters them again. We don't even have a good reason for her husband finding her beyond “the plot demands it”. There's a perfectly good, interesting conflict set up that Lackey just forgets all about.
Feh. The worst part is, when the next one shows up on the library shelf, I'll probably end up reading it anyway.
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Historical fantasy (19th C England)
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: A dancer running from an abusive husband becomes a stage magician's assistant and discovers that he's using real magic.
Thoughts: Why do I keep reading these? I'm starting to think that Lackey's Elemental Masters series is kind of like Twinkies: a taste from your childhood that you get bouts of nostalgia for, that are kind of addictively enjoyable for the first third, but by the time you're finished, you realize they really aren't as good as you remembered and you feel dissatisfied and vaguely annoyed with yourself for doing this whole thing again.
Things that were worthwhile: there's something about the way Lackey sets up characters that I find deeply appealing. There's a certain hominess, a comfortable enumeration of the details of setting up a life. Katie is a likeable character, if a bit Mary-Sueish, and the details of how she finds herself angstily on the run and then builds herself a new family are fun.
But the characters are so ludicrously black and white that it actually gets kind of irritating. Everyone save the antagonist(s?--more on that later) has hearts of gold. Katie's husband, on the other hand, is an uncomplicatedly evil brute who doesn't stomp on puppies only because no puppies appear. Good and evil is fun and all, but an antagonist with no motivation beyond “be really really mean” isn't very interesting.
And the ending—oh, the ending. I'm not going to spoil the exact details. But there is a clear problem to be solved—something must be done about Katie's terrible husband. They propose half a dozen possible solutions, each of which would have made a more interesting book. What actually happens, though, is essentially an accident. None of the characters actually take an action that results in a resolution. It keeps them all from being bad people—the most obvious solution is to unleash some of the magic that Katie, her boss, and her love interest all have in spades. But it also completely robs all of them of any shred of agency. No one has to make hard choices, or do anything clever, and any bravery is merely reaction rather than action. It's anticlimatic and a complete betrayal of the characters.
Worse, there are the seeds of a more interesting plot that are laid and then abandoned. I increasingly get the impression that Lackey writes these in one go and no one bothers to edit them at all. Katie's parents die in a mysterious fire before the novel starts. Katie's original boss forces her into her awful marriage for reasons undisclosed. It's briefly hinted that untrained magicians can be drained of their power. Everything is set up for a terrible revelation that Katie's boss killed her parents and trapped her in a marriage so that he could drain her at his leisure. Only one problem—we never meet the damn boss. After she escapes the circus before the book starts, she never encounters them again. We don't even have a good reason for her husband finding her beyond “the plot demands it”. There's a perfectly good, interesting conflict set up that Lackey just forgets all about.
Feh. The worst part is, when the next one shows up on the library shelf, I'll probably end up reading it anyway.
