Valdemar: Collegium Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey

Valdemar saga (chronological in time order of the world, not order of publication)
The Mage Wars
The Last Herald - Mage

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Collegium Chronicles is the third mini-series in the Valdemar saga. The first book is Foundation.

I read this book right after finishing Demon Copperhead, so I was in a fragile place and wanted a bit of escapism and really thought that the magical world of Valdemar could provide that for me. I was thrilled when I opened the book and there was a timeline and I had read the books in the internal chronology of the world correctly.  Yay for me!

So, as you can tell, we've moved ahead about fifty years from The Last Herald-Mage and now there are lots of Heralds, but no Herald-Mages. Mags is an orphaned child who is forced to work in a gemstone mine under abusive conditions. I really struggled to get through the first couple of chapters because I sort of assumed I was heading back into Demon Copperhead territory. However, Mags is Chosen by his Companion (remember these are the horse-like creatures who have special magical abilities and should NOT be treated like horses) Dallen and is whisked off by Herald Jakyr to Haven and the school for Heralds.

This book is not heavy in any way. The Collegium is new and many Heralds are upset with a change in teaching methods from mentorship with Heralds in the field to a school-based system with an apprenticeship at the end. Mags is somehow pulled into some political intrigue with some "furrin mercs" and he ends up being mentored by the King's Own Herald, Herald Nikolas. What a life for a boy from the mines. 

I am really loving the world of Valdemar and I really enjoy Mags and Dallen.  4.5/5 stars

Line of note:

:'Life isn't fair' is nothing but an excuse people make to justify bad things they do. But why shouldn't life be fair?: (page 51)

Italics within colons indicates that a Companion is Mindspeaking to a Herald. In this case, it's Dallen telling Mags that "life isn't fair" is what people say when they make selfish decisions. I don't know if I agree with Dallen, but I like that Dallen is there to balance Mags' understandable, but certainly powerful, pessimism about human nature.

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Up next is Intrigues. It follows just a few weeks (months?) after Foundation and picks right up. Mags is still working with Nikolas to develop his spy skills, trying to catch up with the students who didn't grow up mining gemstones in his schoolwork, and now he's also recruited to play on one of the four inaugural kirball teams. 

Friends, the "furrin mercs" are back. I don't have words for how exhausted I am by the fact that Nikolas purposefully sends Mags out to do dangerous jobs and that eventually Mags and his Companion Dallen suffer for this. Meanwhile, Mags is determined to find out who his parents were and he finds some records that indicate they were foreign-born, which leads to people suspecting him of being a traitor to the King. Poor Mags. He can't catch a break even if he is no longer being mistreated in a mine.

(I'm reluctant to write much about kirball. I feel like this is Lackey's response to Quidditch and just like how I don't think the Quidditch scenes brought much to the Harry Potter books, I don't think the kirball scenes bring much to these books. BUT. I do think that the relationships that Mags builds with his teammates is important to the overall plot of the book, so I guess I will forgive the endless scenes of ball chasing and horse jumping.)

Not as good a read as the first book in the series, but I'm still excited to read more and immediately put the next book on my hold list from the library.  3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

He felt like a kitten being raised by chickens. It was obvious that no one here reacted the way he did to things, and everyone here knew from their own experience how people were supposed to treat each other. (page 7)

There's a lot of "woe is me" for Mags early on in this book. He's had a hard life, that's for sure, and he doesn't quite fit in because he doesn't know how to. As a reader, I felt really terrible for him.

Setham grinned. "We can't make this easy on you, after all."
"Nossir," said Mags, though privately he wished that for once, someone would. (page 86)

Poor Mags. 

:It's only gossip if you repeat it. Until then, it's gathering information.: (page 216)

Ha ha. Does anyone listen to the podcast Normal Gossip? The host always asks her guests what their relationship with gossip is and I would laugh really hard if someone gave this as an answer.

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I followed this up almost immediately with Changes. Oh, man, everyone's so stressed out in this book. Mags is doing some work for Herald Nikolas that has him going undercover. Leda, his Bardic friend, is struggling with her father, who is a famous Bard, but is a bit of a jerk. Bear, his Healer friend, is also dealing with family struggles as his family wants him to leave the Collegium and go home and get married. Meanwhile, Amily, Nikolas's daughter and Mags's love interest, needs to have surgery to heal a long-injured leg, but the surgery has been cancelled because everyone is worried about her safety. Why are they worried about her safety?

Because those pesky foreign mercenaries have been killed and replaced by two new threats. Plus, there seems to be some spies from inside the Collegium itself who are reporting to them. And why is it that a trainee Herald, Bard, and Healer are the key to solving this mystery? Well, because it's a story told at a magic school!

Honestly, I found this to be quite repetitive. It seemed really similar to the second book in the series and while Mags develops and his relationships are deepening, I didn't think this book really brought much new to the series. (I can do with no more additional Kirball scenes ever again.) Fingers crossed that the next book picks up the plot. 

3/5 stars

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Redoubt was next. For those of you who might not know, a redoubt is a temporary enclosed defensive structure. I saved you a look-up. This book.

So many pages of boring Kirball, wedding nonsense (for the prince who I hope isn't a main character because I've yet to write a word about him) and then the last third of the book was jam packed with action and quite fun to read. *sigh* 

There's a magic cat. I liked the magic cat!

3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

First off, the dedication in this book really touched me. Anne McCaffrey was a sci-fi/fantasy author who wrote a brilliant book called The Ship Who Sang (among many others, of course) that I think about all the time. She also co-wrote with Lackey occasionally. I love the idea of women supporting and mentoring other women.

Because every moment he wasted in fruitless railing and longing was going to be a moment he could be using to make things work, and every moment he wasted that way would be one less moment when he could be working toward being happy and enjoying what he had. (page 231)

I feel like I could use this reminder an awful lot. Stop being negative, make do with what you have, and be as happy as you can. 

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Bastion is the final book in this quintet. I absolutely struggled with the first part, in which Mags returns to Haven after having been kidnapped and nearly killed and goes to a fair the very next day? And Mags is sad because he can't play Kirball anymore because they replaced him on the team? And no one thinks Mags needs to go back to his classes?  It's all very weird. 

I don't know. Anyway, eventually Bear, Leda, Amily, Mags, a Master Bard named Lita leave to go on a circuit with Herald Jakyr and Mags and two companions so Mags can find out more about his family's background. Along the way, we realize that Mags still has not rectified some very large gaps in his survival knowledge, including how to cook or forage for food. 

Honestly, I thought this was almost exactly the same as Redoubt. Boring first two-thirds of the book that has virtually no impact on the rest of the book and then there's fighting and excitement in the woods. Eh.  

3.5/5 stars

Line of note:

...maybe when it was happening to someone else, it was a lot easier to see what needed to be done. When it was happening to you, things got blurrier, the way a picture did when you brought it too close to your eyes. (page 233)

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This was not my favorite of the Valdemar collections. The next trilogy is still about Mags and I guess I'm not sure I'm going to be diving in right away. Maybe I'll step away from Valdemar for a bit and return a little later.