Book Review – Lackey, Mercedes. “Magic’s Pawn” (1989)

Overall Quality 4.0 / 5.0 (recommended)
Gay Content 3.5 / 5.0 (protagonist, several major characters, and several subplots gay)
Gay Positivity 2.0 / 5.0 (may not be explicitly anti-gay, but filled with negative
stereotypes)

Summary

Adolescent Vanyel Ashekevron doesn’t fit his father’s notions of what a son should be. In fact, his father, Lord Withen, feels desperate to instill some manly discipline in Vanyel, and decides to send his to Haven, where Withen’s stern sister is a high-ranking Herald-Mage.

Feeling utterly alone, Vanyel resigns himself to a cold and isolated life. But in Haven he meets another young man, Herald-trainee Tylendel, who arouses powerful and unexpected feelings in Vanyel. They fall in love, but family drama leads Tylendel to a terrible act of desperation, which threatens to destroy them both.

Characters & Narrative

Vanyel is simply one of my favorite characters in literature. The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy covers his lifespan from adolescence to death, so the reader gets to grow up with him. He is a sympathetic and engaging character with both strengths and flaws, deeply textured, unique, interesting, and well-written. He’s also gay. Reading this series for the first time as an adolescent myself, I was able to identify strongly with Vanyel and live vicariously through him in a fantasy world.

Narratively, “Magic’s Pawn” is a fast-paced, relatively quick read. It covers a lot of ground in just a few hundred pages: from Vanyel’s unhappy home life to his misguided but understandable attempt to protect himself at Haven to his burgeoning relationship with Tylendel to Tylendel’s disastrous choices to the aftermath and its effect on Vanyel to Vanyel’s training with the Tayledras Moondance and Starwind. Whew!

The novel finds its greatest strength in focusing on Vanyel’s internal life and on his relationship with Tylendel. Lackey has written a character study first, a gay romance second, and fantasy action-adventure third.

The plot tends to be a little disjointed and rushed. On one hand, Lackey clearly does not suffer from the writing disease common to many fantasy author: over-writing. On the other, while she has mastered the art of characterization, the story itself falters. It’s the characters who drive this book: the reader keeps reading because s/he comes to care about these people. And that’s great, and given a competent story, it’s enough.

Still, it could have been an exemplar work of fantasy writing if Lackey had developed the story a little more. Or at least slowed down and given each component of the story a little more depth and exploration. But this is personal peccadilloes: many readers prefer precisely this type of structure (emphasis on character, fast-paced storyline, not much plot detail or depth), so this factor didn’t influence the Overall Quality score very much.

Although “Magic’s Pawn” comprises the first third of a trilogy, it easily stands on its own. The story hints at overarching plot threads that wind through all three books, but that’s pretty much it. As I said, these books are more character study than anything else.

The Gay

And now we come to the meat of my review and analysis. On the whole, this is not a gay positive work. But! It IS a seminal work in the canon of gay-themed fantasy/sci-fi literature, written during a time when homosexuality was largely absent in genre fiction.

As mentioned, I first read these books as a young gay man hungry to see myself represented in the kinds of books I liked to read (fantasy and science fiction). When I discovered a series where not only a major character but the actual HERO was gay, I ate it up! I read the first two books on a cruise ship, but I didn’t have the third with me. I frantically scoured our Alaskan ports of call to locate it. I was starved for this kind of representation.

But reading the books didn’t make me feel good about myself as a gay man. Rather, I felt despondent. Love doesn’t work out for gay men, like it doesn’t work out for Vanyel. Society rejects us, like it did Tylendel and Vanyel. We have to hide our love, and our lives tend to be miserable, like Tylendel’s, and lonely, like Vanyel’s. It never ends well for us. This book communicated to me the worst homophobia that society had already force-fed me: I was doomed to solitary life of misery, and then I would die suffering.

Of course there are positive aspects to her portrayal; and I do not mean to accuse the author of blatant homophobia. She’s done the gay community a service by writing this book and series. In fact, I greatly appreciate the positive aspects – sympathetic treatment of a hero who’s deeply characterized, well-written, and gay. And intended for a mass audience.

Still, I must emphasize, the books incorporate an astounding number of negative gay stereotypes and clichés of the worst sort.

Overall Quality

Just as a fantasy novel, this book has a lot going for it: really great characters in a fast-paced, tightly written story. I was disappointed in the relatively linear and undeveloped story, but the plot and narrative were still more than competent – Lackey knows her stuff. Definitely recommended.

Tags: Gay Fantasy