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lovelybrains's review
5.0
Great insight to an enemy country and it's people, in the world of Valdemar. One of my favorites.
ielerol's review against another edition
3.0
I've read and re-read all my comfort staples too many times over the last four years, I wanted something else unchallenging and familiar but not too familiar. So I thought, I haven't read a Valdemar book in like 15 years, why not revisit what was my favorite Valdemar trilogy back in middle school?
Well, it turns out it's hard for me to separate my feelings about this book from my feelings about the kind of person and reader I was when I first loved it. The prose style is much more utilitarian and, at times, sloppy (awkward repetitions, "from whence", enthusiastic use of italics and exclamation points outside of dialogue just in case you might miss a Very Obvious Point) than I usually have patience for now, and like, it's very white person 90s fantasy! Everyone is lily-ass white aside from the Shin'a'in and Tayledras who were described as "hawk-faced" and "exotic" entirely too many times. All the countries are described as having "a type" except for Valdemar, where I guess the white people come in many different hair colors and heights and chin shapes? Because no one's type includes skin darker than "golden."
And yet, this book, and the whole series, does actually lay out with a lot of sensitivity some very difficult and important emotional situations, and shows people working successfully toward solving their problems and healing from (really awful) trauma. And at age 13 I really needed some stories that would be extremely detailed and explicit about emotions the way these books are. So did I roll my eyes kind of a lot reading this? Yes. Did I also cry when Tremane's "little birds" found some of their marks? I sure did.
Also the Valdemar books were by far the gayest media I was consuming as a kid, and Firesong is the queeniest of queens, which is still pretty great.
Well, it turns out it's hard for me to separate my feelings about this book from my feelings about the kind of person and reader I was when I first loved it. The prose style is much more utilitarian and, at times, sloppy (awkward repetitions, "from whence", enthusiastic use of italics and exclamation points outside of dialogue just in case you might miss a Very Obvious Point) than I usually have patience for now, and like, it's very white person 90s fantasy! Everyone is lily-ass white aside from the Shin'a'in and Tayledras who were described as "hawk-faced" and "exotic" entirely too many times. All the countries are described as having "a type" except for Valdemar, where I guess the white people come in many different hair colors and heights and chin shapes? Because no one's type includes skin darker than "golden."
And yet, this book, and the whole series, does actually lay out with a lot of sensitivity some very difficult and important emotional situations, and shows people working successfully toward solving their problems and healing from (really awful) trauma. And at age 13 I really needed some stories that would be extremely detailed and explicit about emotions the way these books are. So did I roll my eyes kind of a lot reading this? Yes. Did I also cry when Tremane's "little birds" found some of their marks? I sure did.
Also the Valdemar books were by far the gayest media I was consuming as a kid, and Firesong is the queeniest of queens, which is still pretty great.
craftingrama's review against another edition
5.0
Its out of sync with the list but its close enough to know most of what's happening. Its good to be back to reading Valdemar books again and this one was really good and a number of times the advice offered various characters talked to me about the situation I am in at present which was kind of spooky. I kind of wish it was a kindle version so I could have kept those but oh well. I have the trilogy for this section so am going to enjoy the next few days while I work and listen to this set.
cleheny's review
1.0
I read once that Lackey's ambition is to be the most prolific writer of the 20th Century; it shows in this trilogy. The storyline is dull, as are the characters. Karal is generic in the first book and becomes increasingly perfect in the following books. Lackey has always had a tendency to create Mary Sue's for main characters; her best protagonist, Vanyel, is not entirely free of this fault. But Karal takes the cake for blandness. And the explanation for how Karse became Valdemar's ally is also quite facile. Lackey's theology is supposedly that gods only intervene after humans have tried everything, but Solaris' rise to power is a true deus ex machina moment. And any subsequent difficulties she may have had to consolidate power are routinely smoothed over by having V'kandis manifest himself.
Elspeth was hardly my favorite character, but I missed the meaningful presence of Heralds. In this book, Valdemar's leaders--who were so creative and visionary in previous books--can't figure anything out for themselves. If not for Karal and An'desha, they wouldn't even think to value the contributions of the "artificers." Which is bizarre, as it's pretty clear that the "artificers" are taught at the Collegium and receive patronage from the nobles, and possibly grants from the government. Yet no Heralds or Valdemaran leaders even consider them as a resource.
Elspeth was hardly my favorite character, but I missed the meaningful presence of Heralds. In this book, Valdemar's leaders--who were so creative and visionary in previous books--can't figure anything out for themselves. If not for Karal and An'desha, they wouldn't even think to value the contributions of the "artificers." Which is bizarre, as it's pretty clear that the "artificers" are taught at the Collegium and receive patronage from the nobles, and possibly grants from the government. Yet no Heralds or Valdemaran leaders even consider them as a resource.
timlucier's review
3.0
The first time I read the Storms series, I had no idea what was going on.
As a huge fan of Lackey's work, in particular those taking place in Valdemar, I read most of these books out of order given their accessibility (working through used book stores, etc.) Storms came out new while I was working through her books, so I gave it a try and was completely lost in the narrative and unhappy with this Valdemar that seemed so different from the one I knew.
Later, once I discovered Amazon and was able to order all my missing Valdemar novels, I re-read it and enjoyed it much more - though still not as much as many of her other books.
If you are going to read storms (which you absolutely must if you want to know the whole story of Valdemar, as it is today,) just make sure you read enough of the other books first.
Most of these books, you can read in any order.... however, if you are going to read any of the storms series, you must read the Winds series first (and possibly Kerowyn's tale as well as both Alberich books) if you are to keep from being as hopelessly lost as I was.
Personally I do find this trilogy a bit dull in comparison to Lackey's other Valdemar stories, so I recommend it only as somewhere to go when you just need more Valdemar in your life, and definitely not somewhere to start as your introduction to Valdemar. (starting? try a stand-alone like Brightly Burning or an earlier trilogy like Arrows of the Queen.. I actually started with the Owl books which come directly after this trilogy and I loved them.) The first time I read it, as someone who was pretty well-read in terms of Lackey's work but had missed the key storyline of the Winds and Kerowyn's tale, I would have rated this one star. Having returned to this book (and trilogy) after catching up on my missing plot points, I now would bring that up to 3.
As a huge fan of Lackey's work, in particular those taking place in Valdemar, I read most of these books out of order given their accessibility (working through used book stores, etc.) Storms came out new while I was working through her books, so I gave it a try and was completely lost in the narrative and unhappy with this Valdemar that seemed so different from the one I knew.
Later, once I discovered Amazon and was able to order all my missing Valdemar novels, I re-read it and enjoyed it much more - though still not as much as many of her other books.
If you are going to read storms (which you absolutely must if you want to know the whole story of Valdemar, as it is today,) just make sure you read enough of the other books first.
Most of these books, you can read in any order.... however, if you are going to read any of the storms series, you must read the Winds series first (and possibly Kerowyn's tale as well as both Alberich books) if you are to keep from being as hopelessly lost as I was.
Personally I do find this trilogy a bit dull in comparison to Lackey's other Valdemar stories, so I recommend it only as somewhere to go when you just need more Valdemar in your life, and definitely not somewhere to start as your introduction to Valdemar. (starting? try a stand-alone like Brightly Burning or an earlier trilogy like Arrows of the Queen.. I actually started with the Owl books which come directly after this trilogy and I loved them.) The first time I read it, as someone who was pretty well-read in terms of Lackey's work but had missed the key storyline of the Winds and Kerowyn's tale, I would have rated this one star. Having returned to this book (and trilogy) after catching up on my missing plot points, I now would bring that up to 3.
rogue_runner's review
2.0
This was not as good as I expected it to be. I read a trilogy of Mercedes Lackey back about 10 years ago and remember loving it, so certainly I had pretty high expectations of this when I grabbed it (as an omnibus) off the library shelf. I'm not that inclined to continue reading the other two books in the trilogy either really.
It started off very slow paced, and continued for about 150 pages at the same slow plodding pace- journeying to Valdemar, with very little happening and little in the way of character development or interest. Perhaps if you were invested in the world and the lore of the place (having read more books or more recently) perhaps it would be more interesting, but there wasn't much that drew me to the plot or characters. Something is brewing, but it's taken such a long time to get round to it I'm not invested enough to continue.
Karal was distinctly average, and didn't much stand out to me as an interesting character in any way- apparently his defining characteristic is compassion, but it leads him to being the watcher of action, rather than actually doing much himself. At the beginning there was some premise of build up, with a stock villain enemy, but they don't seem to have materialised into anything more than a very minor secondary threat, and without any sort of intrigue or tactic at all to a promising beginning to the storyline there.
I feel like there are better books to read about Valdemar.
It started off very slow paced, and continued for about 150 pages at the same slow plodding pace- journeying to Valdemar, with very little happening and little in the way of character development or interest. Perhaps if you were invested in the world and the lore of the place (having read more books or more recently) perhaps it would be more interesting, but there wasn't much that drew me to the plot or characters. Something is brewing, but it's taken such a long time to get round to it I'm not invested enough to continue.
Karal was distinctly average, and didn't much stand out to me as an interesting character in any way- apparently his defining characteristic is compassion, but it leads him to being the watcher of action, rather than actually doing much himself. At the beginning there was some premise of build up, with a stock villain enemy, but they don't seem to have materialised into anything more than a very minor secondary threat, and without any sort of intrigue or tactic at all to a promising beginning to the storyline there.
I feel like there are better books to read about Valdemar.
mtk_reads's review
4.0
Apparently it's time for some comfort rereads? IDK. I recognize all of the ways that this book is flawed, but god damn do I love it (although I always forget how much I haaaaate Firesong).