I Read What?!

Made it to the last chapter. Janny Wurts reviews always make me feel so accomplished. It helps me not think about the fact that I still haven't posted my Stalking Darkness Table of Contents. (That one's going up tomorrow, I swear!)

But let's see what purple prose awaits us in the home stretch!

( I hope there's a reference to either feline grace or borderline divinity )

So last time, we saw an old friend. Also the Fellowship might have been almost useful. For a moment. Before being utterly useless again.

( But on the plus side, magic death trap ahead? )

This title bodes well!

So last time, we spent a lot of time with Mearn. He had a rough go of it. The Fellowship remains positively useless. Everyone's walking into various traps. And well, things are not great at the moment.

But we did get to see Elaira tell off Kharadmon. So that was something!

( Hey, at this point, I'll take the positives I can get! )

So last time, we caught up with Princess Talith and resolved that dangling plot thread. I'm sorry, you'll never believe me but that word choice was entirely accidental.

That said, once it came to mind, I had to use it.

So now, we've spent a few chapters building up this whole idea of a trap. Will it live up to the hype?

( No idea, but I bet the prose will be purple? )

So last time, we saw Bardic Angst and Sorcerous Scheming.

We're not going to see the results of the last yet, I think. There's still some set up to go.

( I'm sure it'll be fine! )

So last time, we learned that the Fellowship is really fucking terrible. So are their adversaries, so I'm stuck, reluctantly supporting those assholes. Ugh.

It's funny to me. I am honestly not sure if Ms. Wurts intends the Fellowship to be as aggravating as they are to me. She's not a subtle writer, by any means, but she is pretty thorough, and as we see at the beginning of this chapter and earlier instances, she generally does seem to anticipate a lot of reader complaints/questions about their motivations.

But they're still presented pretty uncritically, with the only callouts (while valid) coming from characters who are objectively worse. Or at least doing more direct harmful things.

( I suppose we may only know by the end...in May! )

So last time, we caught up with Elaira (who delivered a baby), Lysaer (who has just instituted conscript slavery) and Mearn (who is plotting.)

This time, if the somewhat redundant chapter title is any indication, we're probably going to catch up with our actual lead character. And Dakar! Am I still going to be making "get a room" jokes now that hate-sex is off the table?

( Maybe we'll find out! )

So, it's apparently been almost two years since I read the last book in this batshit series that I love and love to mock so much. That's a lot, considering that I genuinely do enjoy reviewing this series.

It is a time and energy investment. These books are fucking HUGE and thanks to the level of purple prose and the ridiculous actions of the characters, I'm inclined toward a LOT of excerpts. To be honest, I'm pretty sure only one person has actually read these. I'm okay with that.

Anyway, I have just learned that the most recent and FINAL book in this series has just gone up for preorder. So the time just feels right to go back to this universe. I hope I have the stamina.

--

So one interesting quirk about this series is that it is divided into arcs, of sorts. The first book, Curse of the Mistwraith, was standalone. Ships of Merior and Warhost of Vastmark are one arc - actually, they started as one book (and the hardcover is published that way) - but it turned out too big in paperback form. That's why Warhost of Vastmark is so small - a mere five hundred something pages.

The next arc in the series, "The Alliance of Light" did not start as one book. Or perhaps it did, I don't know any backstory. What I do know is that this arc consists of books four through eight of the series. It's fucking LONG. And none of these books are Vastmark length either. They do flow together, at least in my memory, enough that I'm not entirely sure what happens in which book.

I THINK this is the one with the naked cuddling? We'll see.

One thing I do know is that this next part of the series will take place over a substantial period of time. We're dealing with a hero and a villain who drank from the five-hundred year fountain after all, and we're going to start to see that. Child characters are going to grow. Some characters are going to die. And it's going to be rough. But we're at the start of the trip, so I don't think we have to worry too much about that yet.

Yet.

Now, given the length and general complexity of the series so far, and the fact that it's been so long since the last one, I decided rather than start outright. I'm going to write a refresher of the series so far.

The real content will be next week.

( I might do more series recaps, if folks like them... )

Okay, so let's talk about Warhost of Vastmark.

Now I mentioned in my Ships of Merior verdict post that it was difficult to evaluate the book entirely because it was only one half of the story. Originally, Merior and Vastmark were written as one book. The hardcover still IS one book (one terrifyingly large book! There was a used bookstore that had it. I already had both paperbacks at the time so I didn't buy it, but I kind of regret that. It would have made a great bludgeoning weapon.)

So anyway, now that we've read BOTH halves of the book, what do I think?

Plot

So the plot of Vastmark IS the plot of Merior. Just continued. Lysaer's got his warhost. They've encountered a temporary setback in Minderl Bay, but they're still coming. Arithon's building his fleet in Merior, until he encounters his own snag.

There's a lot of move and countermove. Arithon flees Merior. Lysaer invades Merior and wins the majority of the townsfolk to his side. Arithon sets up a new base of operation. Lysaer strengthens his alliances and influence in the south. Arithon kidnaps Talith to buy time. Lysaer has Dhirken killed. And it all culminates in the invasion.

And there are a LOT of parallels. The parallels were present in Merior, but definitely more highlighted here. Arithon's strict, near draconian control of his workers, to the point where a woman or child could be alone on a ship in the middle of nowhere and still be assured of their safety vs. Lysaer's vast idealistic army who may or may not engage in the occasional genocidal impulse. Arithon's reliance on the knowledge of the Vastmark archers and Erlien's clanfolk vs. Lysaer's complete ignorance and disinterest in many local practices and customs (such as the Brotherhood of Ath). That kind of thing.

Hah, I just thought of another parallel: Arithon wins the Vastmark archers over through plans to make their lives better, increase their resources, access to education, and control over their trading prospects. Lysaer ends the book planning to make lives on the continent better.

But that said, this is LYSAER we're talking about. So god knows what form THAT will take.

So anyway, since 99% of the set up was in Merior, we could just hit the ground running in Vastmark, and we do. The pace is fast, for a doorstopper novel. And it's fun!

I do think that if I were reading it as a standalone, I'd have gotten lost very fast. But this is not a series that you read standalone. Sorry, you're in for the long haul. That said. I did think it was a good (temporary) ending. It's nice to see Arithon at peace.

Characters:

So let's start with our lead character. Arithon is the kind of authorial favorite that you're going to either really enjoy or really hate. Fortunately for me, I find him delightful. The nonstop action means that we have less time for quiet or introspective moments, sadly, but it's hard to mind that when he's also busy having a bitch-off with his brother's wife. (She was never going to win that.)

Ultra-compassionate asshole is a character type that is very difficult to execute well, but Wurts makes it work. Arithon can be vicious, even cruel, but it's never for its own sake. And when he does make those decisions that cross the line, for example, the Havens massacre, we are given clear reasons why.

And of course, there's Dakar. I mentioned in my Merior review that Dakar's plotline basically sat on the back burner as soon as Arithon reached Merior. But fortunately, Vastmark picks it right back up again.

Dakar hates Arithon and loves Lysaer. But there's a lot that he doesn't know, and there's a lot that he's willfully blinded himself to. And in this book, he's forced to confront that. It could occasionally get a bit frustrating, like how he persisted in his distrust of Arithon after the incident with Jilieth, when they had a full on empathic bonding. But I think Wurts does a good job with setting up some layers there. Dakar may express that he still hates/distrusts Arithon, but their dynamic does shift after that point. Dakar starts to see a lot that he missed before. And of course, the reconciliation is just lovely.

And I appreciate that Dakar ends up taking steps toward self-improvement without it being a huge thing. He stops drinking to excess. He starts taking his magical practice more seriously. But he doesn't become studious, slim and full of temperance. He's still a fat hedonist, who prefers to avoid physical discomfort (me too, dude), but he steps up when it counts.

My only complaint is that the progression of Dakar and Arithon's relationship took a lot of suspense out from the whole "will he or won't he let Arithon die" question. He'd already clearly chosen Arithon's side like two chapters before. (And since we're talking about Wurts monster chapters, we're talking about six normal sized chapters.) But it was still pretty entertaining.

-

Lysaer is really interesting in this book. In Merior, I think the focus was more on his power and charisma. He had moments of vulnerability, and certainly set backs like Minderl Bay, but he was generally shown from a position of strength. He still is, here, but we also get an exploration of his flaws.

These flaws aren't just made up out of the blue, either. They're legitimate traits that we saw all along, even in Mistwraith, but now, they actually matter.

Lysaer is closed-minded. He gets his mind set on the "truth" of the matter, and he is completely unwilling to hear anything that doesn't fit. If Jinesse and her neighbor say that Arithon would never keep a prisoner, they must be misguided. Whereas if he bothered to listen, and ask questions, he might have caught Tharrick instead. He's put Talith aside, causing himself and her tremendous pain, because he can't accept that she has a different perspective.

And he can't accept his faults. In the Brotherhood of Ath, he has a moment where he is almost entirely free of the curse's influence. He hears the truth about his brother, but he can't accept it. Because then he'd have to accept that what happened at Tal Quorin was on him. Lysaer is willing to work hard to strengthen his power of light, but he never considers the ramifications of its use. He never seems to put together, for example, that it was HIS light blasts that destroyed his fleet at Minderl Bay, just like it was his lightning bolt that set off the rock slide at Dier Kenton.

The one open question that's worth revisting is "is Lysaer redeemable?" And the answer is...difficult. It is true to say that Lysaer probably would never have engaged in any of the terrible things he's done if he had never been touched by the Mistwraith's curse. And it isn't clear entirely how much he knows or understands about the curse itself.

But there are also points where he's given the opportunity to fight it. The Brotherhood of Ath show him the truth, when he's as close to his right mind as possible, and he rejects it completely. He recognizes that Talith might actually be able to convince him to drop his crusade, and instead of trying to hear her out, he imprisons her.

In Mistwraith, Lysaer was a victim as well as a villain. And maybe that's still true, but I think it's also fair to say that he is something of an enthusiastic participant at this point.

Verdict:

I mean, look, of course it passes. I wouldn't be able to read and review these giant-ass chapters if I didn't love the book. And in retrospect, Merior passes as well. The plot threads left dangling were resolved nicely. And while I missed Elaira and Jieret, whose plots wrapped up in Merior, I enjoyed the greater roles for Talith and Caolle. It was a lot of fun!