Mercedes Lackey Read order

[Sapphire Guard]

Hi, so Mercedes Lackey (specifically, Valdemar) was recommended to me a while back and I finally got around to reading it. Just finished Queen's Own, but there seem to be a lot of complicated intertwined storylines and jumping around in time from now on. So what would be the best read order to minimise spoilers? Thanks everyone.

[Traab]

Order
The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey 1000 BF
The White Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey 999 BF
The Silver Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey 990 BF
Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey 750 AF
Magic's Promise by Mercedes Lackey 759 AF
Magic's Price by Mercedes Lackey 798 AF
The Last Herald-Mage by Mercedes Lackey Omnibus 750-798 AF
Foundation by Mercedes Lackey 860 AF
Intrigues by Mercedes Lackey 860 AF
Changes by Mercedes Lackey 860 AF
Redoubt by Mercedes Lackey 861? AF
Bastion by Mercedes Lackey 861? AF
Closer to Home by Mercedes Lackey 861? AF
Closer to the Heart by Mercedes Lackey 861? AF
Brightly Burning by Mercedes Lackey 1077 AF
The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey 1270 AF
Oathbreakers by Mercedes Lackey 1270 AF
Oathblood by Mercedes Lackey 1270 AF
Horse Fantastic by Martin Harry Greenberg 1355 AF "Stolen Silver"
Exile's Honor by Mercedes Lackey 1355 AF
Exile's Valor by Mercedes Lackey 1376 AF
Take a Thief by Mercedes Lackey 1376 AF
Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey 1376 AF
Arrow's Flight by Mercedes Lackey 1376 AF
Arrow's Fall by Mercedes Lackey 1376 AF
Queen's Own Trilogy: Arrows of the Queen, Arrow's Flight, Arrow's Fall by Mercedes Lackey 1376 AF /Omnibus
By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey 1386 AF
Winds of Fate by Mercedes Lackey 1390 AF
Winds of Change by Mercedes Lackey 1391 AF
Winds of Fury by Mercedes Lackey 1391 AF
Storm Warning by Mercedes Lackey 1392 AF
Storm Rising by Mercedes Lackey 1392 AF
Storm Breaking by Mercedes Lackey 1392 AF
Owlflight by Mercedes Lackey 1394 AF
Owlsight by Mercedes Lackey 1394 AF
Owlknight by Mercedes Lackey


That doesnt count the collections of random short stories, but thats the chronological order so far. Heh, I actually got my mom to go through these books, she is currently up to the winds of fate series. That being said, you dont HAVE to read them all in order, Mainly from exiles honor on up to storm breaking there is a lot of character overlap, but the earlier stuff gets some mention from time to time at most. Like, you might hear vanyels name (from the magics pawn/pride/price series) and a few mentions of things he did in the later series, but not too much.

[Douglas]

Books from Arrows of the Queen and later should be read in chronological order, they form a single cohesive series of stories that follow on closely from one to another.

Books before that point can be read in pretty much any order, considering each trilogy/series as its own thing. Read the books within a trilogy in order, but the order of trilogies doesn't especially matter. Each of them is essentially filling in one specific historical reference, and these references are fairly well separated from each other. The references are, for the most part, limited to short offhand mentions, such as the fact that some guy named Vanyel existed centuries ago, and he was "the last Herald-Mage".

[Aotrs Commander]

Each of them is essentially filling in one specific historical reference, and these references are fairly well separated from each other.

I'm still waiting for the "founding of Valdamar" gap on the timeline to be filled...



But that said, she seems pretty settled on Mags and company, apparently, especially since...


Closer to Home by Mercedes Lackey 861? AF
Closer to the Heart by Mercedes Lackey 861? AF

...I didn't even know those were A Thing... *adds to book list*

[Starwulf]

I'm still holding onto hope that she'll decide to finish up the Elvenbane series that she started with Andre Norton. One of the first non-dragonlance or forgotten realms fantasy that I ever read.

[Rockphed]

I'm still holding onto hope that she'll decide to finish up the Elvenbane series that she started with Andre Norton. One of the first non-dragonlance or forgotten realms fantasy that I ever read.

Wait, what about it wasn't finished?


Everybody found their person of choice. The elven lords were in retreat, if not defeat. And the one nasty chick got abducted by some sort of weird elf/plant hybrid. I think. It has been a while.


At any rate, my favorite Mercedes Lackey series is the one with the Egyptian dragon riders. Not least because it is a really nice fantasy series that isn't set in Faux-France or Doppleganger-Deutschland. There are a couple fantasy series set in fantasy Persia (not least, A Horse and His Boy by CS Lewis), but that is typically just western europe with the tops of buildings onion shaped and everybody wearing loose pants and veils.

[Traab]

I'm still waiting for the "founding of Valdamar" gap on the timeline to be filled...



But that said, she seems pretty settled on Mags and company, apparently, especially since...



...I didn't even know those were A Thing... *adds to book list*

Yeah, she is constantly adding in new titles everywhere in the timeline. Its pretty cool, I have been reading her work for years now, so I have gotten to enjoy it kinda scattershot. I agree, the founding of valdemar time period would be interesting. I actually really enjoyed the Foundation series since it fills a rather large gap between the last herald mage and Exiles Honor in the timeline. (I dont count oathbound, its tangentially connected to valdemar at best) And books like brightly burning, while an awesome story, are pretty much stand alone novels with no real impact on the timeline. Hell, I think Lavan only gets briefly mentioned once in some other series.

And Rock, I love the Joust series. Almost as much as The Obsidian Trilogy. She is really super talented at writing, able to juggle a half dozen universes and deliver a distinct difference between them and a solid theme each time. Im not a fan of her diane tregard or whatever her name is set of stories, but those ones I like.

[Rockphed]

Yeah, she is constantly adding in new titles everywhere in the timeline. Its pretty cool, I have been reading her work for years now, so I have gotten to enjoy it kinda scattershot. I agree, the founding of valdemar time period would be interesting. I actually really enjoyed the Foundation series since it fills a rather large gap between the last herald mage and Exiles Honor in the timeline. (I dont count oathbound, its tangentially connected to valdemar at best) And books like brightly burning, while an awesome story, are pretty much stand alone novels with no real impact on the timeline. Hell, I think Lavan only gets briefly mentioned once in some other series.

And Rock, I love the Joust series. Almost as much as The Obsidian Trilogy. She is really super talented at writing, able to juggle a half dozen universes and deliver a distinct difference between them and a solid theme each time. Im not a fan of her diane tregard or whatever her name is set of stories, but those ones I like.

Diane Tregard? ... Is that the "Fairy Tales are real, and have power over the universe" series?

[Douglas]

Diane Tregard? ... Is that the "Fairy Tales are real, and have power over the universe" series?
No, that's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. It's a lot of silly fun reading about a Fairy Godmother figuring out which Traditional Story she can leverage to bring about a Happy Ending, etc.

[Traab]

Diane Tregard? ... Is that the "Fairy Tales are real, and have power over the universe" series?

I may have the name wrong, im thinking the modern day witch with the french vampire who work to solve supernatural crimes/mysteries.

[LibraryOgre]

That doesnt count the collections of random short stories, but thats the chronological order so far. Heh, I actually got my mom to go through these books, she is currently up to the winds of fate series. That being said, you dont HAVE to read them all in order, Mainly from exiles honor on up to storm breaking there is a lot of character overlap, but the earlier stuff gets some mention from time to time at most. Like, you might hear vanyels name (from the magics pawn/pride/price series) and a few mentions of things he did in the later series, but not too much.

Mostly agree, though I'd say you only really need to preserve order starting with Arrows of the Queen; Exile's Honor, Exile's Valor, and Take a Thief are later elaborations on side characters, and not as necessary to understand the overall arc that goes Arrows->Winds->Storms->Owls.

[Starwulf]

Wait, what about it wasn't finished?


Everybody found their person of choice. The elven lords were in retreat, if not defeat. And the one nasty chick got abducted by some sort of weird elf/plant hybrid. I think. It has been a while.

.

There was quite a bit left open as I recall(I can't remember specifics, but I do remember that the Elven Lords were about to ready a counterstrike, and that there was a possible spy amongst the Heroes camp), and there was supposed to be a 4th one, she even talked about it once on her website/forum, there was rumor for a while about her possibly doing it herself with notes that Andre had left, but I remember hearing that like 5 years ago so I imagine if it was going to happen, It'd have already happened.

[LibraryOgre]

There was quite a bit left open as I recall(I can't remember specifics, but I do remember that the Elven Lords were about to ready a counterstrike, and that there was a possible spy amongst the Heroes camp), and there was supposed to be a 4th one, she even talked about it once on her website/forum, there was rumor for a while about her possibly doing it herself with notes that Andre had left, but I remember hearing that like 5 years ago so I imagine if it was going to happen, It'd have already happened.

Yeah. That and the Guardians of the Flame are two series unlikely to be finished.

[Rockphed]

Yeah. That and the Guardians of the Flame are two series unlikely to be finished.

That one is "We got transported into our D&D characters." Right? I thought those were a bit weird.

[LibraryOgre]

That one is "We got transported into our D&D characters." Right? I thought those were a bit weird.

Pretty much. However, I was always fascinated by them, and kept hoping he'd get back to them. Unfortunately, the fantasy game wasn't paying as well as being a Concealed Carry instructor, and then he passed.

[Algeh]

(I'm being vague for the sake of avoiding spoilers, rather than citing specific books/characters, even though I am very much thinking of specific books and characters as I write parts of this.)

I haven't done a comprehensive re-read of the Valdemar books in about 10 years, although I do keep picking up the latest ones from the library (though the last one may have finally broken me of the habit due to a stupid, completely unnecessary in-joke that irritated me the entire book (this is not the first time I have been irritated by a stupid in-joke in one of the books, but I may have finally run out of patience)). I'm doing my best to remember the reading order I used to follow when I'd re-read them regularly.

I'd recommend going in publication order rather than in-universe chronological order, because some of the books that talk the most closely to each other are pretty far apart in terms of in-universe chronology, since in some cases she'd write about an event and its ripples in another period. Also, she had a tendency to keep a character's personality constant within a series but sometimes they'd drift a bit between series, particularly during a long layover between writing them, and it's less jarring if you don't read all of the books with Character X in them in a row when she wrote them decades apart.

I think I'd recommend reading all three Arrows books, then the Last Herald Mage books, then the Oath books, then By the Sword and from there I think you can just read forward in in-universe order except for putting the Gryphon books in wherever they fit (Winds? Storms? I don't actually remember anymore - it's somewhere around there). I think all of the other earlier in-universe books were later additions to the chronology and should best be read later after getting through the Storms and Owls books.

Most of the later fill-in internally later than LHM but earlier than Arrows books can pretty much be read any time after finishing the Arrows and Last Herald Mage books in terms of spoilers unless I'm forgetting something, which I might be. Tone-wise, I think it's best to have a nice break between when you first meet a character in the Arrows books and when you meet them again when she wrote more about them later due to occasional personality drift that you'll notice less that way. Any series should be read in order in terms of its own series.

All of this ignores the short story collections. I read the first one of those many years ago and decided to skip the subsequent ones because they seemed to be of the wide-ranging "come play in the universe and examine edge-cases" variety rather than anything closely connected to the main books (the only series-affiliated multi-author short story collections I currently make any effort to keep up with are the ones for David Weber's Honor Harrington books, since those do sometimes introduce characters and plot threads that will be relevant later).

So the the specific order I'd recommend would be:


Arrows trilogy
Last Herald Mage trilogy
Oath trilogy (Tarma and Kethry books)
By The Sword
Winds trilogy
Gryphon trilogy? (not sure - check the copyright dates, this might be after Storms)
Storms trilogy
Owl trilogy


Then loop back and fill in the others. Basically, there's a big semi-arc that starts with the first books she wrote and continues for quite a while, so you want to read the ones she wrote through Owls in publication order. Most of the later series don't connect up as closely outside of their own series (although she's started a second series about Mags, which should obviously be read after reading the first series about Mags if you get that far).

[Traab]

I would suggest the gryphon series before the mage winds, if only because the winds series and those that come after have tie ins to the past. It wont mean as much too read about it without knowing what took place way back then. Its not crucial by any means, but it is probably the strongest connection to previous series that there is.

[hamishspence]

That might also cause spoilers for Mage Winds though.

[Traab]

That might also cause spoilers for Mage Winds though.

Not really, its mainly background knowledge that helps understand where various groups and other people come from and the history behind them in more detail.

[Sapphire Guard]

Woah, that's a lot of reading. See, I asked because I've read Queen's Own, but when I opened Mage Winds somebody called Kerowyn is in it, which I know is elaborated on in By the Sword, which has its own backstory. So what would I lose by going with By the Sword next?

Also, thanks everyone, for all the prompt replies.

[Douglas]

Woah, that's a lot of reading. See, I asked because I've read Queen's Own, but when I opened Mage Winds somebody called Kerowyn is in it, which I know is elaborated on in By the Sword, which has its own backstory. So what would I lose by going with By the Sword next?

Also, thanks everyone, for all the prompt replies.
By The Sword is the story of Kerowyn's origin and development, and how she came to be in the position she holds in the Mage Winds trilogy. The tail end of it also includes significant local events in Valdemar between Queen's Own and Mage Winds. You are right to want to read By The Sword before diving into Mage Winds.

A major part of Kerowyn's origin involves her maternal grandparents and their relations. Their origin and development is detailed in the Oath trilogy - The Oathbound, Oathbreakers, and Oathblood. Some critical elements of it are very briefly summarized in By The Sword, but I think the story works better if you have a more in depth understanding of that, so I'd recommend reading The Oathbound and Oathbreakers first. Oathblood is mostly a collection of short stories with little setting impact, you won't miss anything of continuity significance by skipping it.

The Oath trilogy stands almost entirely on its own, you can read it any time independent of other books.

So, my recommended reading order at this point is The Oathbound, Oathbreakers, By The Sword, and then Mage Winds.

Once you've finished that, I suggest reading the Gryphon trilogy before continuing into Mage Storms. The Gryphon trilogy covers the ancient historical origins of certain groups and other things that become important in Mage Storms. Some of them actually start showing up in Mage Winds, but they're a lot less prominent.

Everything else that is chronologically before Queen's Own, read whenever.

[Traab]

Honestly, just for simplicities sake, read all the series in the order I posted at the top. Why skip around when you dont have to? Just get it in the chronological order of the valdemar world. I mean, its not crucial that you do so, but I think it helps a bit to do it that way so you catch every reference that gets made in books further along the storyline. But mercedes does a great job making sure you dont get lost if you read them out of chronological order. I am speaking from experience here, as I started reading them before several of the trilogies and such were written, and she hopped all over the place chronologically (still does in fact, her latest series is the Foundation through Closer to the Heart books)

[Aotrs Commander]

Honestly, just for simplicities sake, read all the series in the order I posted at the top. Why skip around when you dont have to? Just get it in the chronological order of the valdemar world. I mean, its not crucial that you do so, but I think it helps a bit to do it that way so you catch every reference that gets made in books further along the storyline. But mercedes does a great job making sure you dont get lost if you read them out of chronological order. I am speaking from experience here, as I started reading them before several of the trilogies and such were written, and she hopped all over the place chronologically (still does in fact, her latest series is the Foundation through Closer to the Heart books)

Indeed. My Mum had a fair number of the books, and I started with the Black Gryphon and sort of jumped all over everywhere as I read through them and we bought ones we didn't have and new ones came out.

[Algeh]

I dunno, I think it's worth reading the Last Herald Mage books before Winds and Storms as well, since they introduce some of the Taledras (or however they're spelled - the people with the bird friends) stuff in those books and those come back again somewhere in there, as well as a few other things calling back to the earlier time periods since those were written pretty early so they get referenced a fair amount. (I haven't actually re-read Winds or Storms in over a decade, so they're totally running together for me, but I know the bird friends group I can't spell today gets visited again somewhere in there.) LHM also does a good job of going over magic versus psionics in the setting since they have characters familiar with/using both rather than those baffled by one or the other.

[Douglas]

I dunno, I think it's worth reading the Last Herald Mage books before Winds and Storms as well, since they introduce some of the Taledras (or however they're spelled - the people with the bird friends) stuff in those books and those come back again somewhere in there, as well as a few other things calling back to the earlier time periods since those were written pretty early so they get referenced a fair amount. (I haven't actually re-read Winds or Storms in over a decade, so they're totally running together for me, but I know the bird friends group I can't spell today gets visited again somewhere in there.) LHM also does a good job of going over magic versus psionics in the setting since they have characters familiar with/using both rather than those baffled by one or the other.
The Tayledras (or Tale'edras, or Hawkbrothers, depending on who's talking) are actually so central and important in Mage Winds/Storms that they get full detail treatment in just those books, so seeing them in Last Herald-Mage is redundant. The other connections to LHM are sufficiently minor, tangential, and/or self-contained that you don't miss much.

[Starwulf]

So I have a question for those of you who have read the Elvenbane series that I mentioned earlier in the thread. How closely do Mercedes other books resemble those? Will I enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the Elvenbane books? I've had multiple opportunities to buy her other books(Book sales around here usually have tons of them for 50 cents per) but I've never tried due to not being sure if they are any good or not. I have this weird thing where no matter how bad a book is, once I start it I have to finish it, and if I'm not going to enjoy her books I don't want to lock myself in to reading them.

[LibraryOgre]

So I have a question for those of you who have read the Elvenbane series that I mentioned earlier in the thread. How closely do Mercedes other books resemble those? Will I enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the Elvenbane books? I've had multiple opportunities to buy her other books(Book sales around here usually have tons of them for 50 cents per) but I've never tried due to not being sure if they are any good or not. I have this weird thing where no matter how bad a book is, once I start it I have to finish it, and if I'm not going to enjoy her books I don't want to lock myself in to reading them.

I think they're comparable, though the person I usually compare her to, in terms of plot, is Raymond Feist. Her books tend to be more about relationships and their impacts than necessarily about actions, but the "development of a hero from their adolescence" themes are both there.



I haven't done a comprehensive re-read of the Valdemar books in about 10 years, although I do keep picking up the latest ones from the library (though the last one may have finally broken me of the habit due to a stupid, completely unnecessary in-joke that irritated me the entire book (this is not the first time I have been irritated by a stupid in-joke in one of the books, but I may have finally run out of patience)). I'm doing my best to remember the reading order I used to follow when I'd re-read them regularly.


PM me about the in-joke, please. I'm curious.

[Traab]

I think they're comparable, though the person I usually compare her to, in terms of plot, is Raymond Feist. Her books tend to be more about relationships and their impacts than necessarily about actions, but the "development of a hero from their adolescence" themes are both there.



PM me about the in-joke, please. I'm curious.

Honestly, I both agree and disagree with you there. I have found that her work covers a wide range of plot styles. Some times its kept small and personal, being almost entirely about the relationships, other times its grand and epic in scale. Pretty much each series seems to have its own tone to it. Thats probably why I enjoy reading book #146 in valdemar. :p Also, im curious about the in joke as well, please pm me the joke too. I cant think of many "in jokes" off the top of my head, but its also likely I have read them so many times I no longer notice them.

[LibraryOgre]

Honestly, I both agree and disagree with you there. I have found that her work covers a wide range of plot styles. Some times its kept small and personal, being almost entirely about the relationships, other times its grand and epic in scale. Pretty much each series seems to have its own tone to it. Thats probably why I enjoy reading book #146 in valdemar. :p

True, that was very much an observation about her Valdemar books... but I think that tends to follow through with the Elvenbane stuff.