Darian's Tale Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey

Tis the season for warm fuzzy stories it seems. This trilogy - in fact, the last book of it - was my introduction to Mercedes Lackey, thanks to the wonder of second hand book shops. As a kid it enchanted me with its mix of friendship, cool animals, luxury hippie lifestyles, and detailed magical combats. It's received occasional re-reads ever since for exactly those reasons. After enjoying blast through the Mage Storm trilogy, I decided to read some of her stuff and alighted on this.

The fact that Darian's Tale follows Mage Storm in the sprawling Valdemar bibliography isn't why I did so, but it didn't hurt. The location for this trilogy is Valdemar's far northern border in the wake of the carnage caused by the Mage Storms, and the neglect caused by the wars with everyone that occupied earlier trilogies. Our hero is Darian, initially an orphan apprenticed to a failed wizard in a close-minded village that's made its disapproval of Darian's trapper parents and independent mindset clear. However, along comes a war, and Darian proves he's worth more than anyone bargained for, and as a result gets to spend a bunch of time being a super cool dude with the super cool Tayledras.

The Tayledras are most definitely not elves. In fact, they're humans. Tree dwelling, animal loving, innately magical, highly ethical, super beautiful humans who heal the land. So not elves at all, ya get me? Which makes it surprising that me, who loves elves, also likes the Tayledras. Because they're not elves. And their vales, full of tree-houses and beautiful art and magic to keep the weather great, are totally not places I wish to go.

Generally, I don't think of myself as a fan of fantasy for the "gee, wouldn't that be great if it happened to me" escapism. I don't want to go to Middle Earth, I'm not waiting for my Hogwarts letter, and so on. I am a spectator who likes works that wander in and out of reality, sometimes about the story, sometimes about the humanity, maybe sometimes about the myth and magic too. This is one of my exceptions. Yes, I'd have loved to have been adopted by a bunch of not-Elves to go on noble helpful adventures. This is what Lackey is selling. A happy utopian world to escape to for a few wistful hours.

Something that helps that sale - but that might detract from it for others - is the fairly slice of life, personal stakes, nature of the series. The first book, Owlflight, is a fairly conventional coming of age action-adventure, but books 2 and 3 - Owlsight and Owlknight contain large chunks dedicated to everyday life with very few dramatic moments until the big conflict comes up. As I've written about recently, I don't think this always works, but for some it'll definitely increase the escapist, borderline wish fulfilment nature of the books.

If I'm honest, on this latest readthrough, I realised that offering has palled somewhat for me. I'm not really a person who outgrows books but in this case, my idea of good wish fulfilment has changed. And I think that there's not really enough going on here other than that; the Mage Storms has some good things to say about forgiveness, about really trying to be good, tolerance and so on. Darian's Tale has a lot less.

This could still be a good series for a teenager but for most people, I don't think this is a series I'd still recommend unless they really like utopian slice of life fantasy with lots of nature stuff.