Bastion
The book was "ok", not great like Mercedes Lackey's first sets of Valdemar novels, but not as bad as the previous two books in the Collegium Chronicles series either. I found that I just didn't care very much about any of the characters in this set. Bland would be a good term for the whole Collegium Chronicles to date.The Good: This book actually has "stuff" happening through most of it and the plot goes somewhere.
No endless pages of kirball!
The Bad: Copy/paste fillers from previous books.
(1)No character development and very flat characters. Lena and Bear might as well have been card-board cut outs for all the stuff they didn't do in the book.
(2)Too convenient happenings e.g. Mag's cousin just pitching up and giving up;
telepathic horse just dumping info into Mag's head, magic rocks just dumping whole sale training into heads - this just doesn't fit with the whole Valdemar Universe (IMO).
(3)Too much of Mag's internal thoughts - no action.
(4)No spice/spunk/ struggle or "hanging on the edge of the page waiting to find out what happens next".
Recommendation: If you are a Valdemar/ Mercedes Lackey Fan then by all means read this set (borrow it first though), just don't expect too much. If you are new to Valdemar, then I suggest you start with Queen's Own Trilogy (Arrows of the Queen, Arrow's Flight, and Arrow's Fall) or By the Sword or The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy.
