Going To Hell...Who's Coming With Me?

So, after discovering that yes, Reserved for the Cat was an infinitely better version of Steadfast, I went all the way back to the first-but-not-really Elemental Masters book, The Fire Rose.

I'm not sure if the series rebooted with a new book 1 because Lackey changed publishers, or just because she wanted to retcon out some of the highly ritualized magic she used in this book. (Not that how magic and elementals work is super consistent across the Elemental Masters series anyway.) She completely abandoned the idea of "masters of the same element can't share an area", which seemed weird and never fully explained (frankly, I tend to think the real explanation was "masters with incredibly large egos can't coexist" given Jason's personality and everything we heard about the master who trained him).

I don't actually like either of the main characters. Rosalind's attitude is a bit too much "I'm not like other girls, I use my brain *sniff sniff*". This is something Lackey does a lot in this series, where she manages to simultaneously harp about how the laws and society of the period were incredibly unfair and limiting to women, while also being supercilious about any women who don't buck society and have a properly modern view; I find it incredibly grating.

Our beast, Jason, is fully aware that hubris caused his bestial transformation, and this knowledge has done nothing to curb his ego. While these flaws undoubtedly make our hero and heroine more realistic than Lackey's pure sweetness and light characters, I still rolled my eyes at the both of them.

As is typical of Lackey, you know the villain is villainous because he's a sexual deviant who likes to rape and murder women. There is no subtlety to the black hats in this book.

The book has one Chinese earth master, who is mostly there to be the Magical Oriental, dispense herbal medicine, and establish that Eastern and Western elemental magic is Just Different and those Eastern Masters are so darn inscrutable. There's also a Chinese air master, who exists solely so the heroine can see his burns and realize he must be why the local air elementals dislike the evil fire master.

On the up side, both the heroes and the villains did things, as opposed to passively talking about why they shouldn't do things and then having the villain conveniently die by his own hand. Having last read this book when it first came out in hardcover decades ago, I actually wanted to see what happened, and the climax did not disappoint.

Edit: Oh, I can't believe I forgot the most ridiculous part of the book, which was the pages and pages and PAGES spent on how very important all the elements of summoning a motherfucking unicorn were. How Rosalind had to go vegan for three days to purify herself of the taint of blood, how wool couldn't be used for the robes because it was an animal product...all while the characters are doing this ritual wearing silk robes.

Every so often, I read a Mercedes Lackey novel. I don't know why; I know her New Age version of "the meek shall inherit" will inevitably drive me crazy and make me rage. But I do it because I like her prose and I still have fond memories of Valdemar. And with the Elemental Masters series especially, I know that the Lawful Stupid alignment forced on the heroes will substitute for actual tension as they make their lives 10x harder than they need to be.

But now I've finally read a book where the main characters do nothing of substance.
( Beware now spoilers for Steadfast, the Elemental Masters book ever-so-loosely based on the Steadfast Tin Soldier. Oh god, this is long )

It wasn't until the final chapter that I accepted the fact that the protagonists in this book didn't DO anything to drive the plot, beyond Katie running away in the first place. The abusive husband shows up 3/4 through the book by unexplained means, does abusive things while everyone tries to find ways to placate him so he doesn't hurt Katie too much, and then accidentally offs himself through his own vices.

That...that's it. That's the story. With a charming bonus message of "just keep your head down and don't make your abuser mad, and eventually the problem will solve itself."

This book was like a distillation of everything people say is wrong with Disney Princesses (just be meek and good and pretty and your prince will come save you), only in this book, the "prince" also does fuck all. You could have replaced all three of the main characters with potted plants, and Dick likely would have met the same end because Dick is the only one who actually DID anything through the entire book.

Oh, and how did our intrepid soldier lose his leg in the war? you may ask.

He broke his ankle, his commander thought he could wait for the next train to get medical attention, and the injury turned septic.

Somehow, that feels like a metaphor for this entire fucking book.

Addendum: Someone needs to put a moratorium on Lackey's use of both em-dashes and exclamation points outside of dialogue.

And therefore, I am always annoyed when I pick up an indie book that looks good, has an interesting premise, and then turns out to be shallow, half-developed, and powered entirely by the idiot ball.

This applies to YA just as much as books allegedly aimed at adults. Thus was I really fucking disappointed in A Quest of Heroes (Amazon link), which I am pretty sure I picked up because it was a) free and b) the title seems like a perfectly good phrase for a group of adventurers, amirite? A quest of heroes, a murder of crows, a pack of wolves...

Sadly, the book was not nearly so clever as that, and the worldbuilding was tissue thin. And I don't want to say the main character is dumb as a box of hammers, but his awareness of the world around him extends for about six inches. This might be accurate for a fourteen year old, but it makes for a damn boring MC.

Most importantly, the ways the book is bad are very much self-absorbed Mary Sue-fic bad. Not because the MC is practically perfect in every way, but because the world shapes itself around him. You can tell the villains because they Instahate Our Hero Thor (don't name your hero Thor, people, unless your hero is Thor). The designated Good People equally Instalove him. He is deeply confused why he is hated! And why he is liked! In fact, Thor spends a great deal of the book clueless, conveniently has magic powers as the plot demands (but the Mysterious Magic Man won't explain jack shit, he just shows up to make Mysterious Pronouncements), receives the gift of a magic falcon maybe-familiar from the King roughly five minutes after showing up at the capitol, finds a probably-magic white leopard on a hunt, etc etc.
( In which I complain at length. )
In short, Thor doesn't earn things so much as he bumbles his way into being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people, and then managing to blow it all through sheer lack of sense. The people who oppose him oppose him for no good reason. The Evil Gay Trope offends me less than the sheer lack of sense or intelligence demonstrated by LITERALLY EVERYONE. Declaring your book YA - and I question that, given the whole "getting Thor drunk and buying him a whore" part - doesn't absolve you from basic logic and sensible character development.

The book ended on a cliffhanger, but frankly, I choose to believe the end of book 1 is the end of Thor's story. I'm certainly not going to pay money for the rest.