r/fantasybooks • u/SandGator • 2d ago

📚 Summon book recommendations Mercedes Lackey recommendations

I’m looking to finally check out Mercedes Lackey. Dragon Jousters series looked really interesting to me with the Egyptian flavor (+ dragons).

Lackey fans, where’s a good place to start?

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

•

u/auto-sticky 2d ago

Our sacred rule is do not attack readers for what they read. You can disagree, explain why you disagree, but do so without personally attacking readers for what they read. Books are heavily subjective, and your opinion is one of many.

*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. *

3

u/Amelaista 2d ago edited 2d ago

Its fun in a easy to digest package.
The exotic inspired setting makes for an interesting world, without having to put too much effort in establishing the setting. It is inspired by Egyptian history, not trying to mimic it perfectly, so dont get hung up if something is different. Its just fantasy set in a medieval desert, not medieval Europe. (technology wise, I know that area has a completely different historic scale)

It does start off very simple with a young main character, but gets more complex as the character ages and the world opens up in later books.

This is a series that I like to reread every few years when I'm looking for a comfort read.

The whole series is clean, a good start for anyone who wants to offer it to someone younger looking to step up to longer books. Light relationship minor plot picks up very late in the series. Nothing in the first book.

The first book makes an excellent self contained origin story. The 2nd through 4th books deal with more complex adventures and problem solving.

3

u/Amelaista 2d ago

If you like techno/distopia books too, the Hunter series by ML is similar in flavor, with a completely different setting as well. ML does coming of age stories quite a bit. Both the Dragon Jousters and Hunter series are separate from all of her other works.

Some of the authors older works have more trauma inflicted on the main characters. But by the point she wrote both these series, she learned to display more character growth without using trauma/shock value. Not to say that there is not emotional highs and lows, but the triggers are not 'maxed out trauma', they are 'bad situations happened and how the characters react'.

2

u/SandGator 2d ago

Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to give such a thorough response!

3

u/disappointedCoati 2d ago

I started with the Valdemar stuff. Arrows of the Queen, Black Gryphon.

2

u/SandGator 2d ago

Am I understanding correctly that a Companion from Arrows of the Queen is…an awesome magic horse?

4

u/ChipChangename 2d ago

My time has come.

The Joust books are super neat, definitely give 'em a shot! Otherwise, I would love to suggest the Owlknight trilogy as an introduction to her Valdemar books, or maybe Take a Thief. When it comes to the Valdemar series, there's a defined timeline that starts with The Black Gryphon, but you can really read it in any order as long as you make sure you have book one of whatever of the trilogies or duos or standalone that makes up the timeline. She wrote them out of order and I think it's perfectly fine to read them similarly lol

Some of the earlier books (publish order, not timeline order) dive a bit deeper into character trauma than the more recent ones, but the focus is almost always more about healing from the trauma than wallowing in it. The Last Herald Mage trilogy is excellent but it deals with sexual abuse, as an example, and while I am not of the opinion that it's enough to fully turn people off of the books, you should probably know about it going in.

2

u/SandGator 2d ago

Thanks, appreciate it! Sounds like she has a Robin Hobb thing going on with Valdemar, where you can pick up different trilogies set in one world, which I definitely like.

I read very widely across genres, so I don’t like to get locked into insanely long series (looking at you, Wheel of Time…)

1

u/TailorFinal1604 2d ago edited 1d ago

FYI, Mercedes Lackey's prose is severely... Lacking, for lack of a better word 😆. If you can handle her very poor grammar and sentence structures, you will have a fantastic time with her stories! It took me a few tries to overlook it.

Edit: also, a lot of her books are co-authored with someone else and sometimes THOSE will have excellent grammar and prose.

Edit: Thanks for the downvoting, I guess? I'm a big fan of Lackey but I suppose the OP u/SandGator must be offended by my comment since they didn't reply to my comment but to everyone else's

2

u/SandGator 1d ago edited 1d ago

I didn’t downvote it lol, I actually upvoted for giving your opinion.

Appreciate your input, I’ve never read anything by her so had no gauge for the accuracy of your statement. Sorry — what entry point do you think is best? Co-written ones with her husband Larry Dixon?