Book Review: Bardic Voices
The Lark and the Wren is the first book in Mercedes Lackey’s Bardic Voices series. It’s the story of Rune, a fiddler girl who wants to be more than the entertainer (and sometimes waitress/scullery maid at a village tavern). She wants to be a Real Musician. It is the first novel set in the Twenty Kingdoms of Alanda, the home of the Bardic Voices and Bardic Choices series.
Bardic Voices and Bardic Choices look like fantasy novels, but once you get further into the series they appear to be science fiction. Best to call them science fantasy, for lack of a better genre.
I recommend this book and its sequels.
Warning: Here Be Spoilers
Rune is the illegitimate daughter of Stara, the barmaid at the Hungry Bear tavern in Westhaven. The local villagers assume a bastard brat is “no better than she should be,” as the English used to say, and equally willing to indulge in a tumble in the hay without benefit of banns, and teenage Rune must fight to protect her virtue. Rune wants to become a member of the Bardic Guild, a seemingly impossible goal for a tavern fiddler. She learns from a passing minstrel how to join the Guild, and it ain’t easy.
She must go to Midsummer Fair in Kingsford and compete for the chance to be accepted as an apprentice. Day 1, perform on her best instrument. Day 2, compete on her second best instrument. Day 3 (if she survives the first two days), play a song of her own composing. Rune realizes that in order to compete in the trials, she needs to prepare. She finds a dangerous way to earn money for music lessons and talks herself into leaving home. She heads for the city of Nolton, where she finds a mentor, lessons in music and other things, new friends.
Eventually, she proceeds to Kingsford to the Midsummer Fair, where she learns the difference between the Free Bards and the Bardic Guild. Reunited with old friends, befriended by new friends, she learns of corruption within the Guild and the Church, the existence of Real Magic, and learns not all gossip about Gypsies and Elves is true, nor are all tales of Elves and Gypsies false.
Rune and her friends get caught up in political intrigue in the Kingdom of Birnam. Eventually, all ends happily, whilst leaving room for the other novels in the two series.
Bardic Choices: A Cast of Corbies (co-written with Josepha Sherman)
Bardic Voices: The Robin and the Kestral The further adventures of the supporting characters from The Lark and the Wren.
Bardic Voices: The Eagle and the Nightingales Political intrigue and social upheaval in Alanda. Plus romance.
Bardic Voices: Four and Twenty Blackbirds A murder mystery in Alanda. A constable who won’t give up, even if his suspects are powerful, important people, and a mage who chose her career over romance.
The Lark and the Wren is 488 pages. In my current brain-damaged condition, it took me almost a week to read it. By my standards, that’s fast reading. I used to read a book in a day, sometimes two books. I suspect it’s because I’ve read it before. I am curious how fast or slow I would read a book of similar size that I hadn’t read before. Reading is good cognitive therapy to get my synapses re-synapting. Reading is also recommended for writers and would-be writers. I am a minor writer who would like to work her way up to a mediocre writer.
I would be thrilled beyond words if someday I wrote a book that readers enjoyed as much as I enjoyed The Lark and the Wren.
