Customer Reviews

The Lark and the Wren (Bardic Voices, Book 1)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The Lark and the Wren was the first Mercedes Lackey novel I've read, and while it didn't leave me enthralled, it wasn't bad. Rune is a very real character, and while the story line is very typical, Lackey puts a personal spin on it, her world is cliched, but interesting. I found the relationship between the free bards and the courtly Bard/Minstrels to be the best part of the plot, being a musician of alto sax, piano, viola, and voice, I can appreciate the desire to shun the bards who play for money...not because they love it. The very proof of how the best music is played through the fingertips or voice of some one who loves it, is that the supposed "best bard ever" Talaysen, quit the honorable, sheltered, guild life to start the Free Bards.

Characters besides Rune, Talaysen, and Robin are very two-dimensional, and always do exactly what you expect them to. This is a problem that many fantasy novels fall prey to, so I was not disappointed, just not impressed.

Every plot needs a little romance, people are obsessive about love in all its facets, this is not a bad thing, it just makes for crudeness and tackiness (oh, glorious eloquence :p). Such was the case of the romance of Rune and Talaysen. I have read age gap romances before, an example of a very good one would be in Tamora Pierce's Daine and Numair, (which is for younger readers, but I'm only 14) because they didn't immediately jump into nuptial bliss, one afraid that the other would wake up and find her a little girl, the other afraid she would wake up and find him an old man. Now, L&W tries to do this, it just fails miserably. Why? Because though they do have doubts before their torrid love affair, they suddenly disappear to make the plot more convenient for a very odd subplot with a unacknowledged prince...and well, I understand it's there to build up to the second book, but really. In fact, there were many off-topic plot lines that never did get quite resolved. Of course, many authors have all these ideas in their head about what they want to write, that it's difficult to get them all down in an organized fashion.

However, this was a fun, simple, one-time read.

This book started out good, if not great. It was a light, enjoyable read. The endless cliches in the villains, the plot, and the setting didn't detract too much from the reading. Cardboard characters and cliched settings can be ignored. Rune wasn't a bad character, and it was interesting watching her struggle for survival in a city. If it hadn't been for the second half of the book, I would have given it 4 out of 5 stars.

Then, Rune goes in with the Free Bards.

Why did Lackey include this? She could have easily wrapped it up there. It was a struggle to read through the rest -- Lackey kept throwing in new plot points that had -nothing- to do with the first part of the book, or with each other. None of it was connected at all. She could have cut out the last half of the book and made for an enjoyable read -- but, sadly, she didn't. It seemed as if she had to meet a minimum length for her book and, when her original idea wasn't long enough, she threw in more and more, until she had a long enough book. Was there any connection, any point, to the last half of the book? If so, I'm missing something.

Overall, The Lark and the Wren does -not- get a stamp of approval.

I was given this book by a friend who was certain I would love it with my interest in bards in mind.

While the beginning is, as was stated previously, the cliché of the young girl under personal adversity who triumphs above all in her path... it was personally the better half of the book. The character development was handled rather smoothly, and one actually CARED for the main character, at least to any degree.

At the very instant the trials for the bardic guild ended, the book started spiralling slowly downward. The main character lost any flair and PERSONALITY that she may have had previously. -- There were things I felt that were unneccessarily thrown into the mix. Some may like "random flings of passion", but the addition of them out of NOWHERE caused my stomach to turn. It was inappropriate and detracted from the story. The latter half of the book was absolutely rushed, and with the introduction of a slew of new characters, the old was pushed in the background to become static...never to be looked at as even the same character anymore. If she had not held the same name (and even that was tentative, as she was being known as "Lady Lark" not long after that point) I would not have recognized her as the determined young woman that I had known previously.

Otherwise, the book splits off into another direction completely. In having read most of the second book so far, I can tell you that the beginning of the second was most certainly somewhere about 100 pages near the end of the first. I didn't like the transition. It seemed rushed, and random.

I did, however, enjoy the insight into the life of a travelling bard and to the thought that goes into the workings of bardic magic.

-- This is by no means an excellent book; worth a check-out at the library, and even though I am engrossed in the second book, it is due to the author's style and not the book itself.

I have liked Lackey's other books, but this one just seemed ponderous. A typical girl-runs-away-from-home-has-to-survive-despite-hardships kind of book. What was especially annoying to me was how Rune kept "noticing" the hypocritical way the church conducted itself, and how all they really cared about was money. The book might have been saved for all that, but when Rune finally gets to the Free Bards, away from the oppression of the Church and Bardic Guild, she, and her new-found love, the leader of the Free Bards, seem to completely abandon their earlier characters. Lackey sums the "romance" up very neatly, not even bothering to take time for explaining developments in the relationship. And once Rune and Master Wren do have sex, they immediately "need to be married." Did Lackey just get tired of the book at the end? I just hope she had some other more interesting project to get to, because I would not read another book like this one.

I have to say first off that I'm a huge fan of Mercedes Lackey, but this is just not one of her better books. Usually they keep you entranced to the end. At first, this book seemed to do the same. But as things went on, and the initial appeal disappeared, I lost interest. Of course, I kept on reading to the end, because I was mildly interested in the ending.

One of the things I found that annoyed me was the fact that the characters, the main ones, at least, did not have any major flaws. They all seemed so perfect. Rune was determined, smart, and talented. Talaysen was handsome, famous, talented, nice, and a Master Bard to boot! Furthermore, the book lacks a central plot, and thus seems to drift meaninglessly at times. The characters have little "adventures" that have little connection to each other. Chapters would go on describing trifles and everyday going-ons of the characters. But then the final climactic scene was sqeezed into one short chapter.

Overall, good for a light read, but not something overly engrossing that will keep you turning pages.

Mercedes Lackey is one of those writers who can be pretty OK or awful. Unfortunately, she usually has a very interesting story to tell - she's just not very good at telling it. Her characters all tend to be the same, the dialogue and mental asides are often dreadful, and her sentences are cliched and weak.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the three books in the "Free Bards" series. Reading it, I often find myself actually wincing as Lackey repeats these literary offenses, over and over and over. By the 50th time one character completes another's sentence, accompanied by the sort of triumphant italics and exclamation points you usually only see in a 15-year-old's email, pointing out obvious points that the reader has already grasped three paragraphs ago, you'll be wincing, too. All too often, Lackey is overly impressed by her own cleverness, and she never lets pass an opportunity for a character to grasp some plot "intricacy" (it's usually anything but intricate) with glee and proceed to explain it, point by soporific point, to the other characters. Given that all the characters fall into exactly two personality groups - the good guys, typified by their wide-eyed enthusiasm, goody-goodiness, and the fact that they all like each other, and the bad guys, who are cruel without any motive, and would be sneaky if the plot were complex enough - the reason for these explanations is somewhat obscure.
Well, the plot, such as it is, of "Lark and the Wren", starts off well enough, with Rune, a provincial village girl who only wants to be a musician. She escapes her dull life and heads to the city, where she's aided by an improbable streak of good luck and sympathetic characters, until she's ready to try to join the Bardic Guild.
From there the plot devolves. The trials of a young girl, who we can at least identify with, are suddenly overshadowed by Lackey's lecturing on the dangers of greed, organized religion, sexism, xenophobia, etc, etc, etc. The plot serves as nothing more than a device to move Rune and her friends from place to place where they can be persecuted by the bad guys and/or meet more of the same good guys and/or save the world. The side-plots, rather than fleshing the story out, seem tacked-on, with no real bearing on anything. The characters are unbelievably boring, once you've met Rune, they're all exactly like her. Lackey's use of musical terms, again, is an effort to impress us with her own knowledge. And, if I see one more internalized monologue, I'm going to scream.
Read it if you must, as a Lackey fan, or if you can't pass up a book about musicians. But if good writing is at all important to you, save your teeth from the inevitable grinding that will accompany this one.

I picked this novel up from our local used books a couple of weeks ago, and was initially very impressed.

The first half of the story followed the young girl Rune (born into the typical and clichéd fantasy environment) as she departs home in an attempt to become a member of the Bardic Guild. The people whom she meets on her quest are all quite fascinating, and I couldn't help but agree with the way that she perceived others

However, not all good things last, as the book progresses, and Rune realizes her dream might be a bit out of reach, everything falls apart. Now don't get me wrong, the second half of the book has the most potential, and could have been written in a stunning style, but that was not to be.

What bothered me most, was the abundance of endings. The main characters went through several 'climaxes' before finally reaching the end of the book, which made the last few pages very dull, and the final climax to be overwealmingly predictable.

The number of 'coincidences' also leaves me banging my head in frustration. The moment when the characters need something or someone, it's there! They rarely have to seriously struggle for very long, because someone or something will always come out of nowhere and rescue them.

Alas, alas, this book is still very nice for a light read, and I am interested in acquiring the second book of the series just to see if it improves.

I started with A Cast of Corbies, which I liked a lot. In contrast, the Lark and the Wren was very slow-going, especially the first half (like other reviewers, I found a clear split between the 1st and 2nd half of the book). I thought the action picked up in the 2nd half (unlike other reviewers) but it didn't gel with the earlier part of the book.

The first of the Bardic Voices series, Lark and the Wren is impossible to put down, an original story that grips your emotions as Rune struggles to begin a new life for herself away from her past and towards her future. She must realize her potential and what she wants from life as she begins again in new places with new people and new goals. Mercedes Lackey is brilliant, creating a realistic character whose emotions become our own as you follow her adventures in her search for a new life following her passion of music. This book was inspirational and unforgetable.

This book is set in an interesting world and has a reasonable plot, like so many of Lackey's books. Rune is a character that a lot of girls will identify with. The problem is that Lackey's villains are two-dimensional -- cardboard. This has been a signature of her novels. Her heroes have finally evolved into "real" people (c.f. Arrows of the Queen). I hope her villains follow soon