Magic's Promise - Mercedes Lackey

Magic's Promise
Mercedes Lackey
Daw Books
Copyright: 1990
978-0886774011

The amazon.com product description:

The wild magic is taking its toll on the land, and even Vanyel, the most powerful Herald-Mage to ever walk the world, is almost at the end of his strength. But when his Companion, Yfandes, receives a call for help from neighboring Lineas, both Herald-Mage and Companion are drawn into a holocaust of dark magic that could be the end of them both. Original. 

 Magic's Promise is the second book of the Last Herald Mage Trilogy set in the world of Valdemar, and the sequel to Magic's Pawn. While not my favourite of the books, this one does have some of the most memorable bits of dialogue that have left me laughing every single time I've read the book. Of course, they don't make that much sense if you don't know the story or the characters, but still...

"Where in Havens has our peacock gone?"
"He got lost somewhere south of Horn," Vanyel replied. "I last saw him singing trios with my mind and my wits. I haven't seen either of them in a while either." (Magic's Promise. 35)

There are others too, that I'd meant to quote as well, but the page numbers have escaped me for the moment. Anyway, the story picks up at least a decade after the ending of Magic's Pawn, but it drops us right into the action of the events, leaving us to pick up the basics of what's been going on over the first few chapters. To be honest, the time frame is left unstated, but there are clues like the ages of various characters, i.e. Medren.

Its' a good story, and yet, it doesn't quit seem to fit with the overall story line of the first and the third book. I think that's perhaps why it's not quite one of my favourite books. It just doesn't seem to have any connection to the events of Magic's Price.

I was reading Magic's Promise in e-book format on my Kobo e-reader, and like I said with my review of Magic's Pawn, it's riddled with typos again. The same ones that were in the paper version of the book and then a whole lot more too: places where the italics stop early, or continue on into the rest of the book, a few typos that look like bad ocr scanning, and a few others as well.

Still, Mercedes Lackey writes a whole lot of my favourite books, enough that she's about the only author I regularly pre-order books for, and this is a good one. I do recommend it, though not without reading the other two as well.