Review: A Tangled Web

A Tangled Web by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was short, sweet and cute, and made for a quick read for a boring afternoon. Not much to say about it, but the re-visioning of the Greek gods was interesting, to say the least. I didn't mind seeing more of Leopold and Brunnhilde since they only appeared briefly at the end of The Sleeping Beauty, though I would have liked to see more of how they'd met and fallen in love. Romance, unfortunately, doesn't seem like a very strong factor in the Five Hundred Kingdoms world since most of the books seemed to lack very exciting romances; they keep falling too flat for my liking.

Nonetheless, it was enjoyable.



View all my reviews

Review: The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Yea, I really, really enjoyed this one. This is probably one of the better of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, though I've noticed that we get a lot of hit-or-miss with this particular series. I'm glad I love the world enough to continue following it even with a book here and there that tank pretty badly.

I DO appreciate the humor and found myself laughing out loud on various occasions throughout the book. I also appreciate the fast-paced-ness of the story progression, although there was a point where it felt like the story went from Plot A to Plot B and became a totally different story with the same players. Nonetheless, it wasn't aggravating enough to turn me off. I loved the characters created, though with so many of them running around, I found that it was hard to relate to one or another without feeling detached. If not for their personalities, the story line, and the humor, I'm not sure how well the characters would have stayed with me.

I so, SO, want to just go through and highlight every line in the book that I found hilarious. I know that some people might not find certain things funny, but I get amused really easily by simple things. For instance, the idea of seeing Siegfried running from his Shieldmaiden of Doom (even if the event is only narrated as an occurrence in the past) and mentioning that the Gods were probably just moving the same girl in a ring of fire around the lands... I found that ticklishly giggle-worthy. And the Wise Beast Bird -- Oh, I LOVED her!

There has never been one Godmother in this series so far I didn't like, and so I really, really loved that Godmother Lily had such an explosive personality. She was awesome and funny and resourceful all in one package. And Rosamund was a fairly competent heroine I enjoyed following through the book.

The only qualms that I do have about this book were the romances, which seemed a bit flat. Then again, in the end, they didn't really bother me all too much anyway. Aside from that there were moments of corny dialogue that even I had to wince at, and there was a slight detour in my attention somewhere (even if I don't really remember at what point), and like the rest of the series, we do suffer from some "conveniently placed resolutions" scattered among the story line, though in this case, I didn't mind them as much since they were plot points that showed up in the later stages of the story rather than being used to force the story progression.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book a lot. I'm a sucker for laugh-out-loud, and coupled with great prose, concepts, and decent plot progression and well created characters, I'm sold up and down.



View all my reviews

Review: The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



I'm leaning more towards a 2.5, but I can't muster up enough like to give it 3 stars outright.

As I have already mentioned in two status updates, this story started off extremely slow. The central conflict and the main adventure didn't even get underway until about halfway through the story. For some books, maybe this formula works, but if we're going to spend 50% of the book doing world building and story set up, I would have at least liked for it to be worth while.

While I enjoyed the parts concerning Godmother Aleksia and how her life runs as the Snow Queen, Ice Fairy, I got pretty tired of the Sammi and of Annukka and Kaari pretty quickly. There was nothing about either of the two women, or even of Veikko, to make me really care about what happens to them or him if the Snow Queen got her way. There was little to no mention of Veikko, himself, or of Lemminkal or Ilmari for me to really care about them either. Between all the main Sammi characters in this adventure, it felt almost as if the story was trying to introduce key players, but cut short their significance.

Once again, I honestly just didn't care enough about the characters themselves (save for Aleksia) to really put much stake in the final resolution of this story.

The other thing that bugged me a lot were the oh-so-convenient resolutions lain in the right places. It didn't take long for me to predict how the entire story was going to end based, not only on how The Tradition works magic, but also on how typical story boards play out. Every conflict had such a prettily packaged solution that it actually started getting a little irritating. Conflict in this book was merely conflict carefully placed in the proper progression to propel the story forward. I was not amused nor was I awed by anything that happened.

Nonetheless, it wasn't like I completely hated this book. The prose and the concepts and the background lore of the world of Five Hundred Kingdoms still really entices me. I honestly like the magic in this world and I like the world itself. Had this adventure been written a little better, I might have enjoyed the story itself, but ultimately, the two stars really came to be because of the Five Hundred Kingdoms world on its own. The including half a star is given to Aleksia who is quite the spunky Snow Queen Godmother whom I enjoyed following along with.

Other than that, I've got nothing else to say about this book. It wasn't terrible by my standards, but I could have passed on it any day if I didn't like the world it's set it so much.



View all my reviews

Review: The Fairy Godmother

The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Short and simple:

The beginning of the book was a little hard to get into; the entirety of Elena's apprenticeship, while quite interesting, seemed to drag a lot if only because I feel like I'm reading a textbook version of "The Fae World of the Five Hundred Kingdoms" rather than experiencing this strange new world through the protagonist's eyes. Possibly, since Elena is such a book worm and logical thinker, everything that we see through her eyes are described just as technically as she perceives it. Unfortunately, while Elena is a witty and creative individual making use of her logic and knowledge, her technicalities end up causing the narration to be a little more boring that it could have been.

I've never read anything else by Mercedes Lackey, but I know she's a bit of a name in the fantasy genre, which shows in her prose and style. It just seems that nothing quite exciting really ends up happening in the story that makes it so that you "just can't wait" to pick the book back up and keep reading. (For instance: I fell asleep at least twice while reading certain parts near the beginning. I fell asleep once near the end, but that was more on my own exhaustion than due to the book's pacing since I direly wanted to finish those last two chapters just to see the conclusion of the last conflict and the entire Godmother Elena story.)

One thing I DID enjoy about this book was the world's set up as well as the magic system. Very rarely do we see any standard, unique magic systems in a lot of fantasy books anymore (although I really shouldn't make that assumption since I haven't even chipped the block of fantasy novels on my bookshelf, but whatever). I liked the entire deal with The Tradition, even if it really just feels like a fancy, more fairy tale fun way of talking about Fate with it's own twisted logic and predictable paths. I liked that Elena was a competent Godmother from day one as the apprentice, and I truly started becoming more interested in the book when Elena was finally named Godmother after her apprenticeship ended. If I had to pin point it, I'd say that that entire first half of the book detailing the Godmother apprenticeship was "just story board set up material" which would make it an extremely long way to set up the rest of the world and the story. Because for the most part, nothing really effected Elena much until after she finally became the Godmother following Madame Bella's "reign" (if that's what we can call it since Godmother's essentially are like "gods" lording over other people's lives, even IF their meddling helps to propel The Tradition that could lead to happy endings).

I will continue on with the next book in The Five Hundred Kingdoms series, if only because I've grown fond of the world that was established all too well in this first book. The fact that each book seems to begin a new story for a new protagonist is also something I look forward to experiencing. This book wasn't entirely the best, but I would point out that it isn't at all disappointing once you get into it.



View all my reviews