Magic's Price

Valdemar: The Last Herald Mage, Book 3

By: Mercedes Lackey

Narrated by: Gregory St. John

The final chapter in Mercedes Lackey's spellbinding fantasy trilogy!

The Herald-Mage, Vanyel, and his Companion, Yfandes, are alone responsible for saving the once-peaceful kingdom of Valdemar from the forces of a master who wields a dark, forbidding magic. And if either Vanyel or Yfandes falters, both Valdemar and its Herald-Mage must pay the ultimate price.

©1990 Mercedes R. Lackey (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

One of favourites, and still makes me cry

I loved the trilogy from the start years ago, and it unfailingly still manages to make me laugh through much of it, chuckle with tenderness from time to time, and cry and smile both at the end. A very powerful young adult story that you keep returning to over the years, especially in this audio version. The reading performance is very comfortable for me, the voice soothing and expressive where necessary, not overly so, just as it sould be in my mind's imagination.

There is a fault in the recording, though, for which I can only give it a 4 for overall. It is not the performance itself at fault, not the story in the least, but a technical glitch, I think.

!!! Warning for spoilers (there is goes): when hawk brothers come to heal Van, and they goin forces all four of the participants, there is a part which I love dearly missing from the recording. I know it is there, because I read it a couple of times before listening. The description of the process of calling the mage back to himself. And in the recording there is nothing, just the beginning of the scene, and then we are already at the beginning of the next scene in half a second. It was a pity to miss on this episode in the audio. End of spoiler.

The best of Valdemar

This trilogy is my favorite of Valdemar, immediately after come the Winds trilogy and the Oath books plus Kerowyn's By the Sword. It is heartwarming and heartwrenching and deeply roots in your life experience without having to actually live it. Somehow Mercedes Lackey manages this despite too much exposition that could have been used as points of relationship development (i.e. Stef's recollections of his life history that could have been better better used for conversations with Vanyel). Her characters become completely real , except for the villians who are simply evil. Though my literary tastes have become more complex over the years, I still loved listening to these almost as much as the first time I read them many, many years ago (and a couple times since).

The narrator's voice and characterizations were excellent. The only thing that brought a 5 star performance down to 4 stars was a persistent mispronunciation of certain key words and a few English words as well. While they are made up words, it seemed obvious to me that shaych has a ch sound like cheese and not any other breathed gutteral or sh sound; also ashke should be ash-ke not ashk, and I always heard VANyel not vanYEL. While this can be overlooked and the story still enjoyed, I think a bit of research on unfamiliar words could have improved the performance to perfection.

very moving

this is one of my favorite author s! love how you see the characters grow and struggle. though this series will have you in tears it is very moving and beautiful story. it amazes me how much depth is in her story's.

Great series and love Valdemar!

Don't particularly like the reader due to them making it difficult to track when POV changes, But I absolutely love this author and this series.

a dissapointing end to a fine tale.

I find that the story over the last tree books. Well worth their price in my mind, skimms over the parts of the story that i am most exited about. The Action. I begun listening to them because of a song preformed by Heather Alexander, named Demonsbane.

I thus had expected a bit more about the actual last battle that the series fortell in the previous books.

I do like how the use magic is told and I totaly belive it.

I love the characters, and creatures told about in these tree books.