Current mood:	calm
Current music:	Peter, Paul & Mary - Hurry Sundown

Review: Elvenblood by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey
Title: Elvenblood
Author: Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Fantasy
Grade: B
Reason for Reading: I loved the first book in this series to distraction.

Synopsis: The powerful magic of ruthless Elvenlord masters has for centuries rules the world.
Even Shana, the legendary Elvenbane prophesied to deliver the oppressed into freedom,
is helpless before such power. She and her ragtag band of outcasts, half-blood wizards,
escaped human slaves, and free-thinking dragons have gained only a token victory
against the mighty lords.
Only the long-forgotten Iron People, a band of human nomads, have escaped the tyranny
of the reigning wizards. How have they survived through the centuries?
As the winds of change sweep the world, and as tensions seething beneath the surface
of Elven society threaten to break into open revolt. Shana meets the ancient tribe.
Could an age-old secret free Shana and her people...or will its discovery call down
their doom.

My Thoughts: This was a hard book to grade. Because while there was a lot here that I liked, what I didn't like I really, really didn't like.

What works here are the recurring characters. I come back to serieses like this because I want to read about characters I've come to love. And I have definitely come to love Shana and Keman and Mero. I also liked the additional characters we meet here, particularly Sheyrena, an elven lady whose brother, Lorryn, has been a hidden half-blood. It is in fact Sheyrena that grows a lot over the course of the story from an idealistic, childish little girl to a strong, capable woman.

The Iron People were also an interesting addition. There was enough here that I would have liked to learn more about their culture.

I also really liked seeing a glimpse of elven society we didn't get much of in the last books. It's fairly clear that elven women are just as oppressed, and in some ways further oppressed, as the slaves. And I liked that small, women's magic was just as important as the flashy stuff used by elven men, and it's in this way that Sheyrena comes into her own.

Now for what I didn't much like.

First, the villains. All of them--and there was a new villain popping up around every tree in this book--are of the moustache-twirling, "Bwahaha! I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids!" variety. Everyone who isn't all that thrilled with Shana is villified, and I would have preferred some genuine motivation other than what we got.
The other thing that didn't work for me in a huge way will be so shocking, and also tread into spoiler territory, that I am putting it behind the cut.



I hated the romances. Yes. There were three of them, and I hated them to varying degrees.

Starting from the least hate-making, we have Shana/Lorryn. I actually kind of liked this pairing, except that not nearly enough was done with it. I didn't really understand why, specifically, Shana was attracted to Lorryn, and he her. Plus, the declaration of love--or whatever that was--at the end was so anticlimactic. Shana's the main character, for Cthulhu's sake. Give her more to work with.

Stepping a bit further down the ladder of the romances I hate, we come to Keman and Dora. There was even less here to work with, and I got the impression Lackey and Norton were thinking, 'Hmmm, if we give Shana a love interest, and we give Rena a love interest, Keman needs one, too. OK, so, let's insert this random dragon dropped literally into the middle of the story.' I liked what little we saw of this character, but that whole subplot should really have been cut since the other thing it accomplished could probably have happened easily some other way.

Then we have Rena and Mero. Mero who, in the first book, was definitely set up to appease the slash fangirls. While I did like that he finally got a love interest, I really hate that the whole very slashy subtext of his relationship with Valyn was ignored in favor of Rena. And, honestly? I thought Rena deserved a better happy ending.



There is a third book in this series, Elvenborn about an elvenlord. I haven't decided whether I want to read it or not. It would take an exceptional character at this point for me to find anything remotely sympathetic about the elvenlords, and apparently Shana and friends don't appear at all. I might read it because I'm a series completist that way, but after this book, there has to be an extremely compelling story involved, and I'm not sure this particular fantasy world really has a lot more to be mined.

So would I recommend Elvenblood ? Sure. It's not nearly as good as the first book, but it's not a bad read, if you don't mind a few cliches, and can overlook the ridiculously stupid romantic elements.