With a spring in my step and a brick in my bag...

This week, I finally got to listen to the audiobook version of the fourth Collegium Chronicles book by Mercedes Lackey.  It was really good fun revisiting these characters, particularly since they've kept the narrator consistent throughout, and he uses some very distinctive voices.  The structure of the book was a little odd - it had a standard, Valdemar-set first half, with various goings-on among the student at the Collegium, but then the second half made an abrupt shift to a survival story after the protoganist was unexpectedly kidnapped and subsequently escaped in the wilderness of a different country.  The whole thing was pacy and exciting, but the shift was very sudden and meant that a raft of the usual characters just dropped out of the narrative half way through and didn't reappear.

I also realised something that should have been obvious from the outset:

• The protagonist's parents die when he is just a baby
• He is raised in deprivation and continually told that he comes from 'bad blood'
• He is rescued as a young teenager by magical means and whisked off to a special school for people with magical gifts
• He has two main friends - one male and one female, who end up getting married
• He is particularly good at a very odd sport that is played at the school
• Bad guys target him and try and get him to do certain things because of a link in his past to their evil master

It's Harry Potter in Valdemar!!

This realisation doesn't diminish my enjoyment of these books at all, but it is quite amusing.  I have no idea how many are planned in the series, but the end of this fourth one suggests there could be at least a couple more to come - aiming for seven perhaps??  :o)


Today, I finished reading Memories of Ice, the third in the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, and it was awesome.  It's 1180 pages long, it's taken me six weeks to read it, and I've loved every page and never wished for it to be shorter.  I'm now over 3000 pages through this saga, and it's one of the best fantasy series I've ever read - and there are six more volumes to go!  It's similar in scope and brutality to A Song of Ice and Fire, but it has more warmth and more humour (and also a lot more interfering gods!).  The characters are more connected and their interactions more in depth, and I would heartily recommend it to anyone who loves a good long epic with a cast of thousands and more layers than a large onion.  Plus, it's complete!!  Just try not to get too attached to any of the characters...