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Submitted by Cassandra 
(May 18, 2003)

After reading all of Misty's Valdemar series (devouring them is a better term, I guess), I decided to read some of her other work while waiting for more Valdemar. I picked up THE LARK AND THE WREN, and I was hooked instantly. I immediately connected with Rune (later called "Lark"), and had strong feelings about all of the characters.

My only complaint about this particular book is that The plot is pretty ho-hum, just a girl wandering around, trying to make something of herself. The "real" plot doesn't pick up until more than halfway through the book, when they unknowingly acquire "Kestrel" who is the rightful heir to a nearby kingdom.

Despite this lag, I loved the first book. The second book I found was good, but not as captivating, and same for the next books. It seems that Mercedes Lackey used up all of her steam in the first book, then just kept writing for the sake of making a series.

I quite enjoyed the author's VALDEMAR series, but everything went downhill in this series! You get the impressions she writes mainly to pay the bills, putting quality aside. The characters are so sickenly Pc it makes you nauseous! And so saccharine! What's even worse is the dreadful sentence structure and bad grammar! I thought editors were supposed to...well. EDIT! (And that writers well, could, write grammatically.) For example, in chapter 18, the word 'gotten' (poor (English to begin with)appears FOUR times within THREE sentences! On page 458 we have an elf whose 'wing-like eyebrows flew up towards his scalp.' I nearly died laughing at the image THAT produced! Ms. Lackey needs to write less and concentrate more on her craft. It saddens me because, having edited a small press fantasy magazine, I have read the works of many young writers who cannot seem to get a foothold anywhere, and yet have a better grasp of English, and of the telling of a good fantasy tale, than many of the best sellers of the genre.