Book Review: The Phoenix Transformed

Full disclosure: I am a Mercedes Lackey fanatic. She could write a user manual for an original Nintendo system and I'd read it. And probably love it.

That said, I loved this book. The pacing was spot-on, leading inexorably to the climactic final battle, which ended in a way I totally did not see coming, which always impresses me. (It's hard to do that anymore. I've read so many books I generally have the ending figured out by the middlish of the book. For example, I'm reading Storm Front by Jim Butcher right now and I'm pretty sure I know who killed those two people, if not why. If it turns out I'm wrong, I'll be very happy.)

However, while I can see now that the pacing is perfect, in the middle of it sometimes it dragged. By page 500 I was starting to wonder if we even needed this book. Couldn't we have summarized all this? Perhaps, if plot's all we're going for. But Lackey is about more than plot; she crafts her characters with a purposeful, delicate hand. In order to get the characters to the point that they could do what they needed to do during the climactic battle, they had to go through all the stuff they went through in this book. And in order to understand them, we had to see them do it.

**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**
You have been warned.

I did find myself a bit annoyed by Alacandar's disappearance. Other than making everything entirely more difficult than it would have been otherwise, there didn't seem to be any purpose to it. Even the explanation that he'd fallen through a door that was supposed to allow dragons and Bonded to live forever--therefore making Bisochim into even more of an idiot than he had been anyway--didn't satisfy me. It was too convenient. As was his reappearance--right when the climactic battle is underway. Of course.

Other than that, the book was wonderful. I love Harrier's character and dialogue; I often stopped to read bits of it out loud to W.E. so we could giggle over it together.

At some point, I need to read back through both trilogies involved in this story so I can get a larger view of everything that's happened. The wait time between books has been so long that I'll forget exactly what happened, but the books are so long I don't want to reread two of them before reading the brand new 3rd one. Bleh.

I know I've raved about Lackey a lot in this review, but that's only because I don't know any of Mallory's solo work. If any of the stuff I've loved is one of his touches, I apologize for ascribing it to Lackey.

4.5/5