Arrows of the Queen (1987)

The book is 300 pages of four (or six?) mini stories with shallow plot peaks one after another. That is, every time suspense builds up for a page or two it is immediately resolved by some obvious solution and the story moves on. The first story is about being stuck in a Handmaid's Tale situation. The second is about escaping this on a magical horse and traveling to the capital city to be trained with the magical horse. The third is about being bullied by other students. The fourth is about getting a child to behave. And the fifth is about getting revenge for a past, attempted coup by death sentence. Although not written as a collection of short stories, maybe it's better to imagine this like that.

The characters don't feel consistent to their character nor to their purported magical horse society belief system.

And the lack of actual speech in the book makes it feel like the entire book was a sloppily summarized email written directly to me by a friend.

Oh and throughout the book there are hints of frequent (explicitly not just heterosexual) sex going on. The students and magical horse people are as active as the magical horses are themselves. That said, nothing about this is gratuitous or dwelled upon. It's just something people (and horses) do.

Ultimately the book was an easy and entertaining read. ( )

A young, underappreciated and abused girl suddenly finds herself living out her best daydreams when she's chosen to become a Herald to the queen.
Written in the 80s, this is clearly an early-days entry in the Strong Young Female Heroine Who Is Super-Talented in Various Ways but Has Trouble Believing in Herself genre and I assume it's probably one that broke ground in that particular area. It does some things really well - it doesn't feel the need to give her a love interest, and it also introduces a couple of LGBTQ characters in a way that's NBD - so I was happy about that and grateful for the groundbreaking bits, but otherwise it didn't grab my interest enough to make me want to continue with the series. ( )

I like the books Mercedes Lackey writes, she is good at creating a believable world and people to populate it. While her writing is not the strongest I do find it engaging ang and enjoyable. I like a series I can live inside of and her books are ones that have characters I feel invested in and a world I believe could exist. ( )

A beautiful coming-of-age story that has little to do with romance, Arrows of the Queen gives us an earnest and true look at the budding life of a girl in a cruel yet wonderous world.

Would definitely recommend for fans of Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series, and possibly Red Sister fans as well. ( )

Kind of cute, but just too ineffectual / easy. No real... anything to it. Fine. ( )