Customer Reviews

Spirits White as Lightning

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is the sequel to "Beyond World's End" and continues the story of Eric Banyon in New York with Aerune mac Audelaine returning as the villain. Most of the other characters are back also plus there are appearances by a few characters from previous books and from the SERRAted Edge series. There's one new major character in the role of Eric's first apprentice Bard. Despite the large number of characters, Ms. Lackey does an excellent job of weaving all of them into the story. The major sub-plot is well-integrated also and is highly entertaining, especially the visit to the Las Vegas elves. All in all this book is a pleasant read although I strongly recommend reading "Beyond World's End" first because this story is so closely tied to events in that book.

In one realm Sir Eric Banyon, known there as Silverflute, a Queen's Knight, is a hero who saved the world. On a more earthly plane, Eric is a Juilliard student flautist who flunked Introduction to Music Theory because he missed his midterm saving the world from Aerune. Eric attends summer school to make up the credits and stay in school

Of course Eric has other activities intruding on his studies. These include a naming ceremony for his daughter Maeve and coping with being ripped off by his professor, a technical genius who has no earthly idea how to teach. This is next to nothing for Eric who has faced deadly enemy in combat, but remains unaware that Aerune and the Sidhe are plotting a rematch with a different ending.

SPIRITS WHITE AS LIGHTNING is a humorous "Bedlam's Bard" tale that cleverly mixes ordinary life with fantasy elements. The amusing story line never slows down as old favorites and villains return for another world threatening engagement in between homework assignments. Eric is a complex hero who can save worlds, fail classes, and look at his infant daughter and seriously claim she looks like Winston Churchill sans cigar; this Queen's Knight makes the tale sing. Sub-genre fans who relish a comic fantasy romp filled with New York guardians and Vegas elves will join the chorus line of readers singing praise to Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edgehill for their latest collaboration.

Harriet Klausner

I am a great fan of Ms. Lackey but I had issues with this book. There's a lot of (for want of a better word) dissing of fantasy fans and their passion for their fantasies. That passion that makes us believe there really are other worlds, and births a million Mary Sues that we only hope we're smart enough not to inflict on the masses... anybody else get what I'm describing and did anybody else think this book speaks against it? It's hard to describe but it bothered me a lot.

Apart from that, of COURSE this is a wonderfully fun book, how could it not be? And of course I'll be buying the paperback.

So Eric Banyon is still living in New York and going to school. I don't know if I'm the only one who noticed this, but in "Beyond Worlds End" he had come out of hiding after the events in the first two books in the series. Well, since time gone differently, it had been somewhere between 10-20 years in our world, so he hadn't really aged much because he was in Underhill. He said the authorities would be looking for someone much older than he was, like in his 40's, but in this book, she messes up COMPLETELY. After saying it had been years and years and years, Kayla comes to New York, and is still a teenager. She was 17 in the first two books, and now she is preparing to go to college. Wouldn't she be in her 30's if the plot was actually CONSISTANT? There are other various things in this book that just don't go along with previous storylines, and it's just boring and doesn't really drag me into it like the "Last Herald Mage" series did. I know Mercedes could do better than this, but there were such glaring oversights it makes me wonder who her editors are, and if she ever thinks out the plot lines.

Drawing on six or eight different traditions of magic and folktales, Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edgehill have poured it all in a magic cauldron and swirled up a terrific sequel to Beyond World's End. Where else can you find a blue-skinned Rick in Casablanca, or a fox with nine tails that sounds like a street huckster (wanna see what I got under da coat?) or a dragon whose main interest is his Nakamichi CD player. This book has nearly everything: gargoyles, good elves, bad elves, tyrannical music professors, and slow talking hillbilly musicians who turn into Bard Guardians. I _still_ wanna ride Lady Day. This book is complex, funny, wise, and a whacking good read.

The book, despite the inconsistencies that have been pointed out by other reviewers, moves along with an interesting and well-paced plotline. Well....for two-thirds of the book, that is. Sadly, Goblin Market was much too similar to the Bazaar from Robert Asprin's Myth series. The pathetic nod to Fritz Leiber's Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser was enough to make one retch at first read. And then the storyline devolves and becomes something right out of the X-Files with a good splash of Tolkien and Chinese myth tossed in for fun. Mercedes Lackey is well known for her character depth -- not in this one. A very bad writing indeed.

If you like Eric and Beth and Kory, you may want to know what's been happening to them since the last installment in the series. Go ahead and read this one, then. But get it at the library, or wait for the paperback. This book is not as good as it could have been.

Part of it is me; I'm finding Lackey a less compelling read in the last couple of years. But this one is a bit more unstructured than usual - the story really didn't hang together very well.

I thoroughly enjoyed the latestEric Banyon adventure! For me itwas a page-turner. There was a lotof good humor, interesting characters (ie. Chinthliss, the dragon, a Fox with 9 tails, Elves from the Serrated Edge series, andan unlikely Bardic apprentice) andthe ongoing relationships betweenElves and humans. It's a great read, fast and funny.

While I enjoyed Spirits White as Lightning, i think that the authors can definately do better. the characterization is flat and uninteresting, each character has a trait that is basically all that is mentioned about them.Interesting to see Tannim and Chinthliss (from the SERRAted Edge series) in this book, but the caracters are again flat and one sided. Each chapter is told from a different point of view but there are about 3 different stories going on at the same time. while this could have worked the stories have only a tenuous relationship to each other.

Basically while this book is fine for a light read it has no depth of character whatsoever and a plot that jumps around with every scene being somewhere else. I wouldn't buy this book (defineatly not in hardcover)but would get it from my library.

I enjoyed reading this, and the solution
to the "villain problem" was a surprise,
a nice change from the usual "smite him
dead" approach, but... the time-travel/
time-difference references are muddying
the waters for me. In "Beyond World's End",
which takes place "before" the events in
this book,it's implied that the whole Bedlam's
Bard series' events have taken several years,
maybe as much as a decade. The changes that
take place--Beth/Kory separating from Eric,

Beth becoming pregnant and having a child,should
have taken a minimum of three years, but NOW
apparently all this(from Summoned to Tourney to
Spirits) has happened in less than two years
"real time." It just seems like ML hasn't figured
out herself what the "timeline" is. Am I the only
one who finds this confusing?

Still a very good book(I like Hosea. Bet he's not
as stubborn as I am...) and worth buying.