Valdemar was Disappointing

As the third book in the series that took a long time to come out (I think it was 6 months or more from the initial release date, and it kept slipping back more and more), I was looking forward to this. And in finishing, all I could think was, “She should have held it back longer.”

The story needed a specific protagonist with a definite antagonist that was hinted at or foreshadowed early in the book. Instead, it seemed the plot hinged on the question of whether or not Valdemar would survive this dangerous place and the scary monsters and mages around them. And (no need for a spoiler alert) we already know that it does because this is a prequel.

The beginning starts ten years after the previous novel in the series. There’s an upswing in tension when Kordas and his now-mostly-grown son Restil escape the tedium of ruling to kill a dangerous wild boar. But that is quickly tamped when we learn that it’s just a wild boar, not one of the scary beasts that they used to have to fight. I found myself wondering why we couldn’t have read about those encounters instead.

You know that ruling is boring because the book goes into endless detail about how Haven was built and why sewer systems are so important. We get it. Sewers are good. When Kordas isn’t complaining that they want to make him king, he’s insisting on running through the exact specifications of where the people live in the walls made by the “mother” below.

When the couple out of legend show up (Sunsinger and Shadowdancer), you’re so grateful to have an interesting plot point that you ignore that you already know this story as well – because it’s a Valdemaran legend that’s been told before. Kordas assigns the two jobs, gives them a place to live in the wall and the story mostly ignores them from then on.

The ending is exciting-ish. But there are so many macguffins pulled out to explain details that should have been foreshadowed, but weren’t, that even the battle was annoying. At one point Kordas says something about how the battle would be so short, his people would be eating breakfast when it was over. I realized afterwards that that was meant to be ominous. The bad guys would overrun them so quickly that the fight would happen from midnight to 4am. But if you’re eating breakfast afterwards, you’re not dead, so…. I don’t want to spoil it for people, but there was little about why the big bad was after them. The big bad’s motivations were clarified (sorta) in the battle, but it was basically an aside of, “oh, I didn’t come here for THAT I came for THIS!!! Mwuhahahaha!” Oh yeah, and Sunsinger and ShadowDancer show up again to help out, so they weren’t completely ignored.

This book was a forced rendition of “how Valdemar started” with every miniscule detail explained and agonized over. Why is there a bardic college in Haven? Explained. Healers? Explained. School for highborn and lowborn? Explained. Walls around the city? Explained. Origin of the Companions? Explained. The only thing she didn’t explain was the way magic was turned off in Valdemar, and that was because that was already written in a previous novel.

This book, indeed the entire series, felt like it was the author’s attempt to answer every question ever posed to her about Valdemar all at once. And it was exactly the firehose of tedium that you expect from a wikipedia article. The only thing missing was the behind-the-scenes drama of multiple editors changing the text over and over. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that was what caused the initial delay.

I spent $17 on this book (after tax, etc.) and I came out of it wishing I could get those hours back, oh, and the money. This is such a disappointing end to a series that I devoured when Tamily first arrived on the scene back in Arrows for the Queen. If this series had been character driven and less concerned with shoe-horning in every last fact and detail about Valdemaran history it could have been interesting. Lackey could have rewritten “Ladyhawke” and told the tale from the perspective of SunSinger and ShadowDancer and it would have been so much better. But instead, it feels like a book written by a committee of über fans, all of whom wanted their favorite legend, detail, or sewer system included.

This review was first posted on Amazon.

Valedemar (The Founding of Valdemar Book 3) by Mercedes Lackey purchase on Amazon

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