Destiny’s Child

Arrows of the Queen (The Heralds of Valdemar, volume 1)

By Mercedes Lackey

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 25 May, 2021

**Big Hair, Big Guns!**

7 comments

1987’s Arrows of the Queen is the first volume in a Mercedes Lackey series, the Heralds of Valdemar.

At thirteen, Talia faces an arranged marriage. Whether she will be some stranger’s Firstwife or an Underwife matters little to Talia, who has no interest in being an overworked brood mare. Talia also has no interest in entering the Temple Cloisters as a silent servant of the gods. Since those are the only two choices the patriarchal Holderfolk offer women, Talia seems doomed to a miserable life.

Fate intervenes, in the form of a magical telepathic horse.

Although the Holderfolk shun the sinful outside world, Talia knows enough from the tales she furtively reads to recognize a Companion, one of the magical Herald horses, when she sees one. However, certain important details have been omitted from her education. When she encounters Rolan, Talia assumes the Companion has somehow become separated from its rider. Welcoming the distraction from her dismal fate, she sets out to return the Companion to its proper owner.

It takes a while for the penny to drop. Talia has been Chosen by Rolan on the basis of gifts Talia had no idea she had¹. On arriving at the Collegium, she is accepted as a Herald, or at least a Herald in training. She will become one of the stalwarts on whose shoulders the security of the Kingdom depends. Indeed, Talia has been Chosen as the Monarch’s Own Herald, a very special position.

There are some catches, most significant of which is that the life expectancy of a Herald is somewhere between poor and terrible. Heralds are few, they often are forced to work alone, and they deal with challenges others would not survive. Very often, the Heralds do not survive them. The odds are fifty-fifty whether Talia will live long enough to retire or whether she will be killed in the line of duty. Daunting, but still better than anything the Holderfolk would have permitted Talia.

Being a Herald isn’t all fighting monsters from beyond the borders of the Kingdom. In what the Holderfolk might see as an amusing twist of fate — I joke! The Holderfolk are a dour lot who never found anything amusing — Talia’s duties as the Monarch’s Own Herald include mentoring the Brat, the spoiled and ill-behaved Royal heir, Elspeth.

One might blame the Brat’s poor behavior on her lofty status. In fact, Elspeth’s unpleasant temperament has been carefully orchestrated for political ends. Talia and her chums will have to work out why and who. The fate of Valdemar depends on it!

~oOo~

There are adventure novels in which danger is frequently mentioned and yet somehow never manifests for the central cast. This is not one of those books. Given the carnage amongst the supporting characters, it’s astounding that as many as half the Heralds die of old age. Perhaps in Valdemar, old age just means living long enough to be ambushed and hacked to pieces.

Some readers may notice parallels with the Harry Potter books. Note that the Heralds of Valdemar books long predate Potter, as for that matter, do Gaiman’s Books of Magic and Le Guin’s Earthsea, to which the Potter books also bear some similarities. Very special kids with very special destinies are not exactly new. Just ask Arthur.

I am not well read in Lackey, but the few books of hers I have read suggest that while the author is more than happy to provide readers with very special kids with very special destinies, there’s always a catch that makes the destiny not entirely wonderful. Talia has to deal with bullying and cut-throat court politics (and of course, excellent odds of a heroic, unpleasant death). Other protagonists have to deal unexpected curses², and having to choose between being conquered by Team Evil or famine because all the peasants are off fighting Team Evil. Protagonists get to live the dream but there is a price to pay.

Arrows isn’t particularly well written but I can’t imagine that mattered. This book is wish fulfillment of the finest quality, hitting any number of necessary marks: special destinies, remarkable powers, found families, and of course, horses. I can only assume it was (and is) like crack cocaine for the demographic at which it was aimed. And why shouldn’t they have their own wish-fulfillment stories?

Arrows of the Queenis available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Book Depository), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

1: Try not to think about all the Holderfolk girls who were just as miserable as Talia but who didn’t have very special untapped powers and who didn’t get Chosen by a Companion.

2: In Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory’s The Enduring Flame series, protagonist Tiercel gets himself into trouble by dabbling in High Magic before fully educating himself on its drawbacks, most importantly that High Magic often kills the user as soon as they dabble in it. Hilariously, having acquired the Doom of Certain Doom by tampering in that which one should not tamper, he later decides he could become more useful if only he taught himself more High Magic, despite lacking both the knowledge and components to do so safely. Unfortunately, he is interrupted before he tries this. Sad, because the results could have been hilarious.

Comments

Richard Hershberger

I went through a Lackey phase. As you note, the book isn't particularly well written. Sadly, Lackey doesn't get better. She has the knack of storytelling, but not (or at least had not by the time I threw in the towel) the craftsmanship of writing. My guess is that she had enough early commercial success not to feel any need to improve. See also: Tom Clancy. Or, by way of contrast, Lois McMaster Bujold. Her early work is rough, We can watch her working on her craft through the course of the Vorkosigan books.

Tim

An accurate cover would have the words MARY SUE in large glittery red letters. Not that there's anything wrong with it, though this is somewhat too large a serving for my comfort.

But it is rare where the glorious struggle of the hero is in child-rearing.

Elizabeth Buchan-Kimmerly

You have to shake your head about the background privilege of writer swho imagine a society where women have only the choice of being a "brood mare" or a nun. In Real Life, in every society, the markets are full of women selling produce and handicrafts, fishwives, seamstresses, dairymaids, milliners, and grocers, while houses have maids, skivvies, cooks, teachers and nannies. To say nothing of farmworkers. All of whom are invisible to such writers. How about a story about a girl who runs away to become a swineherd?

Robert CarnegieElizabeth Buchan-Kimmerly

I haven't read "Arrows of the Queen" and I don't know if the Holderfolk apart from the heroine appear on more than one page, but a society that takes patriarchy seriously excludes women from a lot of things, usually including reading which Talia specifically does do, I wonder how that happened. And owning property or money. The roles that you mention may be filled by Firstwife or Underwife of a male householder, or by outright slaves, or by extremely poorly paid household staff who are not particularly protected from sexual exploitation. Not really good for Talia.

It may be that an author in the 1980s has underestimated the labour required in a setting without labour saving inventions, unless it is all done by magic instead. But then you just transfer the work to house-elves, which may be unfair to house-elves.

Consulting Wikipedia's article on "The Goose Girl", a princess being married off who was rather less lucky in talking horse terms - or rather, the horse was less lucky - I see that "Thorn" (2012, 2020) by Intisar Khanani is described as a rare version in which the princess unusually prefers goose girling, I suppose, over marriage. However, if Talia has read Harry Harrison's "The Man From P.I.G.", or the Prodigal Son story in the bible, and she likes pigs (which are treated better by Harrison than in the bible), then she could give it a go, and there would be less risk of unwanted sexual advances, except from the pigs.

I have a rather dim sense that there is business with pigs in legends of Wales but that modern feminists will find a lot of the story, as told originally. hard to enjoy.

BBC radio's "The Archers" is a daily soap about farmers which has featured Ruth Pritchard / Ruth Archer who arrived as an agriculture student whose family didn't seem to be farmers, I may be mistaken, and Hayley Jordan / Hayley Tucker, who dated and was dumped by young John Archer who then died in a farm accident, then Hayley and John's brother Tom ran John's pig business as a partnership for a while until it was pointed out that it didn't actually belong to them. Some time after that, I stopped following it, and I admit I'm in some doubt that you can use the information, but they're examples. I suppose that Grace Archer, Jill Archer, and Pat Archer also are incomers, but when I took the show up, they'd already come (Grace was killed in a stable fire in 1955), and only Pat has really done farming.

SprigganaRobert Carnegie

We do learn that Talia had been allowed to read because of her older brother Andrean (now sadly dead), who convinced their father. I suppose that it was Andrean who taught her to read.

And the quality of writing aside [1] I just read for the first time Alanna. The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce, and I must say that I prefer Lackey. At least she has a functional school, and the antagonist is much subtler than "a charming man who everybody loves but except Alan(na), who has a bad feeling about him".

[1] I read both books in translation, so it would not be fair to compare the writing.

Richard Hershberger

Yikes, that is terrible writing! This review made me wonder if a story about a girl whose companion is a magic horse might not be an easy sell to my eleven-year-old, so I downloaded it to refresh my memory. "Not particularly well written" is extremely generous. And yes, as flagrant an example of a Mary Sue as one could ask for. I am appalled at Younger Self's taste in going through a Lackey phase. I long since reconciled myself to the realization that Teenager Me had terrible taste, but this is a matter of Late Twentysomething Me. I recognized at the time that this was not well crafted writing, but was willing to tolerate it. My minimum standards have risen since then. Yet I am still considering picking up a paper copy for the kid.

Richard Hershberger

At the risk of flogging this dead horse, I had an epiphany. This book is a late 19th-early 20th century juvenile novel, lightly updated. Its plot arc is nearly identical to Frank Merriwell at Yale (1903). Merriwell was every bit as much a wish fulfillment fantasy, but a male fantasy where Talia is a female version. Merriwell was every bit as omni-competent, but there was none of the empathy stuff. He totally would have been empathic had the situation called for it, but this is not the early 20th century masculine ideal so the question doesn't arise. And Frank Merriwell at Yale is an Americanized imitation of Tom Brown's School Days (1856) with the distracting literary merit stripped out. (The comparison to Harry Potter is apt. Hogwarts is Rugby School with magic.)

It took me this long for the pin to drop because when I was reading Lackey back in the day I hadn't read turn of the century juvenile fiction. This is a later idiosyncrasy I developed, mostly reading the sports version as period pieces in connection with my interest in baseball history. Once I had my epiphany the similarities were obvious. I doubt that Lackey read obsolete juvenile fiction, but she certainly picked up the zeitgeist.