The sequel to Gryphon in Light, titled Gryphon’s Valor, is due out next month—apparently, the release date has been delayed indefinitely. Amazon and other book-sellers have the release date set as June 21, 2033. I decided to republish the article I wrote after the release of the first book. This version is heavily re-written based on thoughts I’ve had since the initial release of the book.
⚠ Warning: Spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.
After reading Valdemar and noticing some of the same issues with Valdemar coming through in Gryphon, I’m still up in the air about purchasing Gryphon’s Valor.
While I like the fact that Lackey returned to present day Valdemar, it honestly felt like I was trying to put on a shirt that fit me when I was fifteen. Another reason for that feeling is that over the last ten or so years, I’ve become dissatisfied with contemporary fantasy for reasons ranging from “it’s too popular and filled with crap” to “I’ve outgrown this.”
Table of Contents
Proof-reading: It Matters
The first half of Gryphon in Light was published in three of the Valdemar anthologies. One of them—Transmutation—I read back in late 2007. The most recent installment, I remember reading sometime at the end of 2018. The problem I had with those stories—and it’s carried over to Gryphon—is that a lot of the details are wrong.
My biggest pet-peeve is that the details that were wrong in the short stories published back in late 2007 through 2018, were still wrong in Gryphon in Light. My hope was that someone would have caught these errors and corrected them but it looks like these stories were simply dropped in, no editing or proof-reading at all.
For instance, in the story’s opening, Darkwind is introduced as k’Treva—he was originally k’Sheyna so what changed? Another one is a couple of references to Kerowyn’s Skybolts as Firebolts. The story gets it right—at first—but then Firebolts is used throughout most of the first half of the book.
Is This Canon or an OOC Fanfic With a Gary Stu?
All of a sudden, Treyvan is an Adept mage? And can create Heartstones with no problem? Aaaaaaaand can build a Gate when that’s supposed to be impossible in this post-Mage Storms world? Gryphonic version of a Gary Stu? I get that Treyvan is a certain someone’s favorite character, but this felt like a little kid’s attempt to create an overpowered version of their favorite character who had the slight misfortune to not be the protagonist in previous stories.
Where the story really went off the rails was Kel’s return home and the “greeting” he received. This chapter was not well-written or well-thought out. If Darian and co. were really worried about another Starblade/k’Sheyna situation, this wasn’t the way to go about it.
Another thing that bugged me is why didn’t anyone communicate with Treyvan to confirm that it really was Kel if they were so worried about an infiltrator? For that matter, why didn’t Treyvan give k’Valdemar the heads up that Kel was coming in like a meteor? Even though this is a post-Mage Storms story, it’s not like there wasn’t any lack of long-distance communications via magic—especially for something that important.
I guess long-distance communications via magic exist, as long as they don’t interfere with advancing the plot.
Any potential infiltrator would not have come in as flamboyantly as Kel did—gryphon or not. Darian and the others acting like complete strangers to Kel is what really made the story feel like an out-of-character fanfic. The only believable part was what Tyrsel did to Kel, and even that felt contrived.
Also, where the hell were Keisha and her sister? Other major characters that seem to have been forgotten about, even though this story is supposed to take place maybe a year or two after the end of Owlknight.
Keisha and Shandy are Empaths, and would be able to see right away if Kel was real and not some kind of plant. Also, not to mention that Nightwind was also an Empath. More oversights that made for huge plot-holes with this particular part of the story.
The one part of this sub-plot that made any sense was the political ramifications of Kel’s actions, but that shouldn’t have affected how he was treated on returning home.
All that being said, if this entire sub-plot was a conflict designed to raise the stakes of the story—it failed miserably. The entire situation felt too artificial for it to work effectively. The story should have stuck to the political consequences instead of trying to shoe-horn in suspicions about Kel being a plant of some sort.
Missed Opportunity: When Retconning Looks Like Virtue-signalling
One of the things that bothered me was retconning Nightwind as having changed her gender from male to female at some point in the past. It’s almost like Lackey forgot that Nightwind and Snowfire had a kid in Owlknight.
To be honest, this retcon felt like virtue-signalling. It would have been better had Lackey had introduced a new character with a back-story that involved transitioning—I think this would have worked as an awesome sub-plot for Jefti, especially when combined with the trondi’irn subplot.
She actually did write a short-story involving one of Need’s bearers transitioning from male to female via magical means that takes place shortly after the Mage Wars—that short was published before the *Twaitter drama, so we know that she is capable of writing original non-binary characters—well sort of—the transition happens at the end of the story, with Need going to sleep due to how much magical energy she used to make the process happen.
*If it’s not obvious, I’ll state it here: I hate Twitter. Which is why I refer to it as “Twatter.”
Anyone looking to dog-pile on Lackey due to any perceived lack of representation needs to understand that it’s incredibly difficult to write from a perspective that you don’t have a handle on—and do it well, without resorting to stereotypes. To be honest, I’d be afraid to for fear of getting it wrong, and getting burned at the stake as a result. Apparently, even that’s not good enough for some people.
It seems like no matter what you do as an artist/writer, someone is going to be unhappy and accuse you of things that were the furthest from your mind at the time you were writing.
The Gathering of Heroes
The negatives out of the way, once I got past the first the part, the story did improve. There’s something on the way that’s worse than the Mage Storms, and it even has the Gods scared. So we now have the classic Hero’s Quest setup, complete with the gathering of the hero’s companions (I mean that literally). Of course, no quest story would be complete without the addition of a Companion and a Firecat. That the story improves—even a little bit—is about the only thing that even has me considering purchasing the next book.
If I do purchase Gryphon’s Valor, it’ll be as an eBook and not though Amazon.
We’re introduced to a whole new set of characters too late in the book to really get to know them—which includes members of the Ghost Cat tribe. Unfortunately, it seems like these late additions are really nothing more than expendable Red Shirts.
The final negative is that the book ends on a cliffhanger with the words “To Be Continued.” We all know that ML’s series tend to be trilogies, so “To Be Continued” is pretty much a given. Not sure what happened or if a contracted word-limit was hit, but it was a very sloppy way to end the story. Perhaps the story should have ended at the “gathering of heroes” scene.
On that note—I mentioned this in my review of Valdemar—these stories should have been written between twenty and thirty years ago. The Founding should have come directly after Silver Gryphon, while Gryphon in Valor (and its sequels) should have come directly after Owlknight. Instead, we got fluff stories—Burning Brightly, Take a Thief, and later Collegium Chronicles.
My biggest tiff with both Mage Wars and Mage Storms are the missed story opportunities. Mage Wars should have encompassed the entirety of the conflict between Urtho and Ma’ar, plus the creation of the gryphons—which I guess it did…sort of…in one book. The founding of White Gryphon could have been its own separate series complete with political intrigues, and I don’t even think we needed the story we got in Silver Gryphon—literal example of a filler episode if Velgarth were an anime. The end of Winds of Fury set up the possibility of a new Big Bad, only to have them nerfed in Storm Warning. It would have been nice to see a conflict between Valdemar and the Empire, plus the powerful mind-gifts angle thrown out at the end of Winds of Fury was completely forgotten about.
This first book wasn’t the best introduction to a new trilogy. Despite the improvement towards the end of the story, the discrepancies kept throwing me out of the story, and made it difficult to enjoy. So at the moment, I’m not sure I’m going to bother with purchasing the sequel. I’m giving it 2 out of 5 stars.
Am I Becoming Jaded or Finally Growing Up?
It’s likely a combination of the two. Now that I’m older, I’ve found that I tend to lean towards anime, urban fantasy, and science fiction more than “classical” fantasy. A lot of it has to do with the popularity of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and the number of half-assed imitators and wannabes that those two have produced. The popularity of certain YA/romantasy authors that I won’t bother to name because I don’t want Google associating me with that garbage, also has a lot to do with it.
I’ve been reading Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar books since I was a teenager. The first book in the series that I started reading was Winds of Fate back in 1993. I was 15 at the time and on the verge of dropping out of high-school for a number of reasons ranging from not getting along with my peers to a strong sense of responsibility (thirty years later, I realized that was misplaced) for my family. My parents were in the process of separating and someone needed to watch the youngest kid. That duty fell on me for two reasons: my mother wasn’t responsible and couldn’t be on time for her own funeral, and my father had just started a well-paying job that at the time seemed like a way out of poverty for all of us.
Not getting along with my peers and generally being a loner (I don’t think I was ever lonely, per say), it’s understandable why Heralds of Valdemar appealed to me. Another reason—actually probably the biggest reason—was Lackey’s incredibly technical approach to magic in the world of Heralds of Valdemar. To my Star Trek-tuned brain, it was perfect. Probably better than Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern (which I was also heavily into during this time) when it came to a melding of science fiction and fantasy.
As I got older, I would bring these books out for a re-read for the hell of it and honestly, they’ve gotten me through some of the hard times of my late teens and early twenties. But all things eventually wear thin and show their age. Lackey’s writing style—for the person I became from my late 30s to now—weathered by the difficult times of 2016 through 2020—they fall rather flat.
During those difficult times, it was actually Fate/Grand Order (and to a lesser extent, Extella and Extella Link) actually helped me get through that particular time period.
Keep an eye out for more Fate/Grand Order– and Silent Shadow content!