“Burning Brightly,” by Mercedes Lackey

FM's rating:

1.      Premise 8

2.      Prose 7

3.      Plot 6

4.      Characters 8

5.      Overall 7

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

A pretty good story but, like so many authors, Lackey seems intent on giving us a lot of story for our money.  Back in Charles Dickens’ day, that made sense; there weren’t a million other options to choose from that people could have read instead.  Is our reading experience richer and deeper for cramming 100 pages of story into 300 pages, using filler to make us care more about the characters and events?  Maybe for some people it is. And maybe it really works to some degree in this book. Is it to be assumed that a person who takes the time to read a work of fiction is simply frittering away some hours anyway, so why not kill even more time by making a story needlessly long?  That tells us more about the writer’s attitude toward reading fiction than it does the reader’s.  Each episode in the plot should further the plot.  Creating empathy with the characters is fairly easy to accomplish through dialog and character reactions to the events of the story.  Filler is not appreciated or necessary.  Having said that … In between the filler passages of this novel lay plot points that are extremely well crafted, with real emotional impact.  The mental connection between the Heralds and their animal Companions is a real highlight here.  One feels you can almost tell the difference between the sections that were written first and the filler sections that were added later which are not as well-crafted or even well-phrased.  I don’t know when I’ve have read a novel in which the difference was as easily detectable.  I think this is one of the pitfalls of mapping out the plot line ahead of time in too great a detail.  [This applies to planning structure and form in instrumental music as well, in my opinion; at which I have more than a little experience.]  By the end of the story, where the events that have been led up to finally occur, we can mostly forgive the lengthiness.  The climax is fairly well presented even if the scenes occurring afterward are rather maudlin and trite.  Yes, it’s clear that I am not the target demographic here, that this book is written mostly for the teens and early twenties crowd.  But I have read many books written for that readership that are truly outstanding.  This one is a valiant attempt, but falls just short in too many ways.

Here’s the October line-up!  (Happy Halloween!)

 

“Needful Things” by Stephen King [10/3]

“The Laughing Corpse” by Laurell K. Hamilton [10/10]

“The Hellbound Heart,” by Clive Barker [10/17]

“Violin,” by Ann Rice [10/24]

“Necroscope,” by Brian Lumley [10/31]

(As always, if there are any books you’d like to recommend for the next month, please do so!)