*laughing at this entry on Fandom Secrets*

[guardians_song]

You didn't see how full of fanfic tropes her work was BEFORE?

I enjoy Mercedes Lackey's writing, but good grief, it could not be more obvious that if she'd been born later, she would have been a Harry/Draco BNF. And it's also fairly obvious that she went through fandom during a phase before the anal-retentive "This is Sueish! This is unrealistic! This is preachy!" era, because she's not exactly subtle. 'We have telepathic magical horses, and soulmates, and angsty angst angst, and lots of very pretty gay men (and a corresponding dearth of lesbians), and lots of Camel-Case MagicalTalents, and random awesome stuff thrown in because the author felt like it, and...'

Comments

[dinogrrl]

lol yeeeaaah. I've always noticed those issues with her but honestly they haven't bothered me as much as the fact that she has no idea when to stop with the needless extra words and redundancies. She could literally cut out half her books and nothing important to the stories would be lost. I do like her worldbuilding and characters and ideas, just...stop rambling. Please x_x.

[guardians_song]

Mm, I don't think I ran into the books with those. To be fair, I only read some of the Diana Tregarde books and the Last Herald Mage* and Mage Storms trilogies, so the redundancy may hit later. Or it could be that I'd start bashing myself over the head with a shoe if I had to reread the same worldbuilding-infodumps too many times... :P

*I really get the feeling that she used the middle book for a side-story and had an absolute freakout when she got to the last book and realized she hadn't covered half the plot she needed, though. Is that just me? It just felt like she was rushing through the plot literally as fast as she could and not have it be a Wikipedia summary.

[dinogrrl]

I've read the Mage Wars and the Dragon Jousters. I didn't really notice the infodump/excessive wordage problem in the Black Gryphon (though now that I think back on it, it's definitely present there), but the White Gryphon, I only made it halfway through the book before I went "Just DO something already!" and stopped out of frustration. Dragon Jousters was almost over the top with how bad the redundancies and unnecessary words were. Seriously, I think I only actually read about a third of the first book, I skimmed the rest. I still got the story and I don't feel like I missed any important details.

[guardians_song]

*nods* Okay, maybe the quality wildly varies depending on if her editor was drunk that day the book. I know that I did crack up a bit at how over-the-top melodramatic The Last Herald Mage was. I don't remember infodumps being an issue, though.
I'll take care to avoid those books... o_o

[dinogrrl]

Yeah, I generally avoid Lackey's work now, which is a shame because I really do like her worlds and ideas and characters, but the writing is just not something I'm willing to put myself through.

[guardians_song]

She's basically the writer who made me realize that I'll slog through any sort of writing if the worldbuilding/ideas/characters are interesting enough, so I can't disagree. We just have different writing-quality-tolerance levels. :P