This book is so, so upsetting. Oh, it’s still good, and is pretty compelling for almost the entirety of its 330 some pages. But everyone’s so nasty to each other, there is so much unjustified anger and hatred and suspicion and -- oh, dear God -- the ceaseless insecurity and self-flagellation of our put-upon hero, Mags, that it’s often very unpleasant to read.

Magpie -- popularly known as Mags -- is an orphan and former mine slave who was Chosen by the Companion Dallan in the first book of The Collegium Chronicles, Foundation. Dealing with the set up of the venerable institutes of learning in the Valdemaran capital of Haven known as the Collegia -- one for Heralds, one for Bards and one for Healers… a fourth, for Artificers, is added later -- Mags’s Coming of Age tale is wound into the history of Lackey’s already well-articulated fantasy world. Through his eyes we see the origins of so much that we already take for granted from the 30+ other books (including the anthologies) set in this same magical realm, most of which take place many years in the future.

And that is what a lot of these Collegium Chronicles are: an origin story. But beyond that, they are the story of Mags himself, a young and ignorant boy brought forth into a society of which he knows nothing and his subsequent voyage of self-discovery. From ever so humble beginnings he has been co-opted into the ghost-run nationwide police force that is the Heralds of Valdemar, and we join him as he struggles with classes and friendships and duty, trying to overcome prejudice and make use of his disadvantages and to figure out his proper place in the world.

Also, he becomes a sporting hero at a game even more confusing than Quidditch -- if you can believe it. And one that is explained just a little too well.

Which, actually, is symptomatic of several problems inherent in this book. Lackey seems to have succumbed to the Curse of the Over-Explanation that so plagues the most prolific writers; it’s almost like they have to walk us through every facet of their characters’ lives with infinite care because they themselves require reminding of just which book it is they’re working on just at that moment. Did we really need to relive every moment of Mags’ scrubbing out of pots in some unknown Haven household? Every second of his walking, unnoticed, down a street, and his every thought process about how best to go about being unnoticed? Probably not. Another issue I take with the prose is that more than one anachronism and Earth-centricism crops up -- most particularly, the use of the cliché “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, coined for Lord Byron in the nineteenth century, surprised and confused. (Are we to believe Valdemarans are familiar with Childe Harold?) Intrigues also suffers from a major editing meltdown, having been greenlit by someone apparently unacquainted with the rudiments of grammar or Spell Check.

But all of this is far from the book’s biggest sin.

Okay, sure, teenagers -- as our main characters here are -- are tempestuous and melodramatic, unthinking and occasionally cruel. Life certainly isn’t always fair, and sometimes we have to forgive our friends for even the most thoughtless slights and deliberate insults, because we love them anyway. But if the whole point of his story is for our timid and officially nameless hero Mags to learn that he is worthy of respect -- and if that’s not the point, what is? -- then the fact that he could only see himself at fault for the dismaying events that occurred instead of his so-called friends and protectors at the Collegium at large, all of whom treated him abominably with nary a word of contrition (Bardic trainee Lena, in particular, is a stone cold bitch), then it has failed spectacularly.

To be honest, I was only able to endure the disturbing tumult of this book’s back end in the comfortable knowledge of an eventual vindication… which does not come, and which, in retrospect, makes those pages and pages of despair and suffering even more harrowing. I raged. I cried. I cast the book aside several times in impotent fury.

I finished the book and cried some more.

This is, admittedly, where Lackey excels. Her facility with emotional impact is truly remarkable; even in a story you don’t like, you have to admire her ability to get under your skin and inside your head, and often into your heart. Her way with poignancy and pathos and romanticism and retaliation is almost unparalleled, and she showcases it well in this, her most traumatic tale of gratuitous agony yet.

I’m in awe of her skill. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

As for the next adventure of Mags (Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books almost always come in threes), will I tune in? I guess, if only to see if this determined martyr might actually grow a spine… and to discover where it turns out his newly-discovered foreign home might be. (Is it Iftel? Wouldn’t it be cool if it was the mysterious and unknowable Iftel!?) But I will never re-read this trilogy again, as I do with all the other Valdemar works, because I would then have to read Intrigues and be enraged once more by the unwarranted treatment meted out to its hapless hero.

The ending of this book so infuriated me that I regret having read it, and its predecessor, at all.

  -- Rachel Hyland