Arrow's Fall

So that escalated quickly. This is the sort of story that separates Mercedes Lackey from a lot of the girl and her pony YA fiction of my youth. Lackey pulls zero punches. She spends the first two books explaining that a Herald's life is not glamorous and very dangerous and very, very likely to get you killed, but Talia and her peeps get out of scrapes all right. It's a nice, false sense of security before betrayal, death, rape, torture, and sudden horrific consequences. I'm not the sort to get teary-eyed ina book, but Kris' death got to me

The ending is maybe a litte pat, but the action of the story more than make up for it. Overall, I enjoyed returning to those fantasy tropes that initially won me over to the genre. I think the story still holds up today and could easily win over more young readers to the cause.