Arrow’s Fall is the climax of Herald Talia’s series. It begins immediately at the end of Arrow’s Flight, where Talia has just arrived home to the Collegium and finds herself embroiled in politics from the get-go. A betrothal offer for Elspeth arrives from the neighbouring kingdom of Hardorn. An offer that appears too good to be true. When Talia and Kris are sent to find out whether the King’s intentions are true, it becomes a struggle to survive that depends on their wits, and the relationships they’ve cultivated with all of Valdemar’s Heralds.
Now from here on out there are spoilers. But I also do want to apply a trigger warning to this book and therefore this review. There are rape and torture within, so tread carefully at your own expense.
“Besides, I refuse to let what happened ruin what’s between us — and really, all they did was hurt my body, they didn’t touch me. What happened to you was worse — Naril raped your soul.”
GRAPHIC CONTENT: HOW TO HANDLE THE AFTERMATH
Graphic content, such as rape or torture, can be difficult to balance. I found it hard to write torture scenes while making sure they weren’t glorified. I didn’t want my book to devolve into torture porn. Mercedes Lackey handles Talia’s multiple rapes, as well as her torture, with impressive grace. There are details left to the imagination (or not, depending on who you are). But the aftermath, the psychological effects and damage such events do to relationships, is handled sloppily at best. The above quote immediately made me angry. Talia is speaking to her soon-to-be husband, Dirk about her experiences. I can appreciate Talia’s separation of soul from body. It’s a coping mechanism that’s valid, although smacks of denial about what happened to her. But the “rape” of Dirk’s soul? Naril manipulated him to try and blackmail Kris. He was rejected by a woman who had no feelings for him but cultivated feelings from him. It was emotional abuse, worthy of making Dirk skittish about women and relationships. But it is certainly not on the same level of repeated rape, excruciating torture, and permanent disability that Talia suffered.
Validating someone else’s pain does not require the diminishment of your own, and it certainly doesn’t require a contest of who suffered more. Talia is a hollow character, a woman who gives so completely of herself that frankly I’m not quite sure what other character descriptions I could give her. There is little time given to her by Lackey to mourn for the woman she was before Prince Ancar and his brutes got their hands on her. There is a great deal of hand waving about Talia being healed emotionally by Healers — a skill she has used on others in the past. But if Dirk has been harmed so egregiously, then why has no one aimed to heal him in the same way? He is given his time to grieve, to hate, to come to terms with the situation and to learn to live with the shame and all the emotions the abuse had brought, but never healed in the same magic way as Talia’s psyche is.
CONTRIVED DRAMA: COMMUNICATION
There are several things the reader is told about Heralds. Chief among them, as the entire first book speaks at length about it, is that Heralds trust each other. They have a familial (and sometimes romantic) love of each other. That they can talk to each other, and should lean on each other in times of turmoil.
And then this is promptly thrown away for the extremely frustrating, not at all funny, love triangle between Talia, Kris, and Dirk where the only person who thinks there’s a love triangle is Dirk. All because they refuse to talk to each other plainly. There is absolutely no reason for this entire plot, other than to pad chapters and frustrate the reader — and not in a good way.
Drama caused by miscommunication in and of itself is not bad, but it is overused and frankly, lazy. Especially when this level of miscommunication was used in the last book for a significant amount of drama between Kris and Talia. Instead of spending so much time on the love ‘triangle’, it would have been nice to actually see the development between Dirk and Talia on-page. They go rather rapidly from not talking to one another to married (a whole other issue in and of itself, considering more time is spent on the marriage than the epic battle between two countries that is the opening salvo of a potentially cataclysmic war).
MORALITY: IT’S IMPORTANT UNTIL IT’S INCONVENIENT, APPARENTLY
Arrow’s Flight, the second book in the Heralds of Valdemar series, spends its entirety discussing questions of morality, ethics, and when it’s correct for Talia to use her gift to influence others — even if it’s simply the act of her understanding their emotions and acting appropriately to her advantage. Arrow’s Fall makes it quite clear that Talia must have come to a very convenient solution to her moral quandaries. Not only does she have no issue with reading others, testing their mental shields, but she has zero compunction against implanting false personalities and memories into two of Prince Ancar’s servants. Servants whose fate we’re left to speculate upon, but I think it’s quite fair to extrapolate that Ancar would not have treated traitors kindly, even if they weren’t in control of their own actions. Quite simply, Talia’s moral compass is agonized over and then completely forgotten.
IN CONCLUSION
I am thrilled to have been introduced to the world of Valdemar. I can’t wait to read books written after this series, as this was the first ones written by Lackey. I’m very excited to read through her growth as a writer. But I am relieved to have finished with Talia.
2/5 stars.
-L.J
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