Arrow's Fall

I would have liked a little more depth of plot. In the last half, events transpired so quickly.

I almost want to give this series a rating of 3, but there are some parts of this book that elevate it to a 4. The story never completely drew me in – the plot was a little too simple, the worldbuilding a little too sparse – but it had some uncommon themes that made the reading of it worthwhile. One was the main character's self-esteem issues: because of growing up in a community where she was regarded as a nuisance, she never assumed that other people would want to spend time with her. Lackey was sensitive to how this might affect a person in the long run, and it was very special and enjoyable to be able to relate to a very fierce main character on this level. Another particularly well-done part of these books was the sex, which wasn't the horribly flat and gendered version that normally exists in fantasy. In fact, Lackey seemed to take special care in writing one of the male characters, Kris, in the way that male authors often treat female characters, with his looks as his main identifying feature. Do I wish the love story could be less love-at-first-sight and more I-fell-in-love-with-you-as-a-whole-person? Yes, but I still looked forward to reading Talia and Dirk's interactions.

So that escalated quickly. This is the sort of story that separates Mercedes Lackey from a lot of the girl and her pony YA fiction of my youth. Lackey pulls zero punches. She spends the first two books explaining that a Herald's life is not glamorous and very dangerous and very, very likely to get you killed, but Talia and her peeps get out of scrapes all right. It's a nice, false sense of security before betrayal, death, rape, torture, and sudden horrific consequences. I'm not the sort to get teary-eyed ina book, but Kris' death got to me

The ending is maybe a litte pat, but the action of the story more than make up for it. Overall, I enjoyed returning to those fantasy tropes that initially won me over to the genre. I think the story still holds up today and could easily win over more young readers to the cause.