Ug, I have never in my life encountered worse writing than that found under the name of Mercedes. It's mind boggling how a book so ignorant of basic fundamentals of literature could get published. The first of the "Herald's" trilogy has a feeble plot arc that climaxes within the first few chapters, then flounders about for the excruciating remainder of the duration.

In the beginning we are presented with Talia, a girl growing up in a society that we are expected to believe is wretched and oppressive (she has somehow learned how to read, but this is the very smallest of Lackey’s plot holes). She longs to be like the people in her books, particularly the “Heralds”, who are a type of elite knight under the queen. Each Herald rides a supernatural type of horse called a Companion (apparently whoever named these creatures liked the taste of varnish), and one day, out of the friggin’ blue, one of these horses drops by and takes Talia away to the queen’s castle.

Talia's journey to the castle is the very first indication of what Lackey is truly lacking in. For page after tedious page, she sits on her stupid horse wondering like an idiot what's going on while the reader mentally screams "EVERYONE HAS FIGURED IT OUT BUT YOU! GET TO THE CASTLE ALREADY, YOU’RE BORING THE AUDIENCE!" She is told time and time again in the towns she passes through that it's illegal for anyone to explain what's going on to her, but Lackey seems to forget this concept later on as the queen who supposedly passed this law is thoroughly stunned as to how somebody could be kept ignorant of "Companion's Choice."

Once that plot whole is vaulted, a series of uninteresting events bombards our mentality as a flimsy conflict is given a back seat to the mundane workings of Talia's life. A villain who we never even meet is disposed of by people who are not the main character in a way that we are not even allowed to see, an unsatisfying plot if ever there was one. And even when that ends, there's still a few chapters left of pointless hanging out.

And all of the flat, one-dimensional characters come back in the next book as Talia goes off on her first epic adventure, much of which consists of staying inside and having a lot of loose sex to fight off the cold. The text reiterates time and time again that Talia is a good, moral person, but we'd have to take its word for it because all concrete evidence screams that she's a tramp. While she repeatedly sleeps with the best friend of the guy she actually likes, she worries all the while that she's giving him the impression that she likes him (the village bicycles of tomorrow are reading your works, Mercedes!). Of course, when she finds out that he bears the exact same concern towards her, she calls him conceited. For not the first time, Lackey-logic strikes out horribly.

By the time the second book concluded a plot that never actually happened, I was too disgusted to go on to the third, deciding it's not worth humoring the friend who owned the trilogy.

Throwing away your gum in.

Throwing away my gum in this book.

There was not a single aspect of this book that was good. This is not based only on my subjective taste, but also on objective fact. Anyone with any authentic appreciation for literature would find it appauling that such a novel could get published.

Start a religion based on the daily worship of Anti-Lackey, the God of Good Books. My followers and I sacrifice a live horse to Anti-Lackey every dawn at a tasteful shrine I've erected in my living room.

A sudden loss of hope for mankind. That, and a need for more gum.

Is without question the single worst writer I have ever encountered in publication.

Enjoying this book would put you among a weighty and very much non-intellectual group, the likes of which cannot appreciate that horses are nothing but smelly barnyard animals and who often grow up to own far more cats than any single human is entitled to.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Created Jul 30, 2005 at 4:05am • Submit your own review...