Books like Magic's Promise

I don't know what just happened, and I'm almost afraid to examine it too closely in case I find things to nitpick (and I certainly could nitpick) and end up lowering my rating.This hasn't been a very good year for me, rating wise, and I was pretty close to giving up on Lackey altogether. I was really tempted to just finish up this trilogy and move on. And for all I know, it goes downhill from here (I know how the next book ends) and this book is a complete fluke. After the dregs of the Vows & Honor series, I wouldn't be surprised if that ends up being the case, but this one gives me hope that there could be other gems in the Valdemar series.This series has certainly had it's ups and downs, and Lackey has quite a few storytelling quirks that irk me more often than not - like her tendency to emphasize words she feels are important but really puts the emphasis on words that end up being completely unimportant and not at all the words I'd emphasize myself. It breaks the natural flow of the sentence structure and I really wish she'd stop trying to help out the readers with the constant italics. Also, she can't write a romance worth a damn. Thankfully, she doesn't really attempt that here, and the little hint of a possible (completely nonsensical) one was mostly ignored and then quickly resolved, taking up maybe a half page out of the whole book total. She has gotten much better at writing action and she's filling in more of the rules of this world with each novel and trilogy that gives new insights into things that didn't quite make sense before. Now I could certainly complain about the "gays don't get happy endings" trope and the "gays must suffer" trope that are definitely in full force here, and I wouldn't blame readers who get annoyed by them, because I certainly do too. But for Vanyel's personal journey, knowing where this character comes from and what he's been through, and knowing already some of the history of this story and how it impacts later generations, what Vanyel goes through here to understand his place in the world and to come to a sort of peace with his hurts and losses makes sense. Also, keeping in mind this was written in 1990, Lackey needed to humanize Van as a character, which means he is going to be used to call attention to many of the stereotypes so prevalent (even to this day) about gay men.I was thrown a bit at first that this jumps ahead in the timeline by about 10 years or so, and some of the cast of supporting characters were new. I was having to catch up at the beginning, but then Vanyel was off for "vacation" back at the homestead with his loving family and things got so good. A former rival turns into a surprising ally, his father ends up being kind of reasonable, there's trouble over the Border and new friends to make. I really liked Medren and Tashir, and it was a treat to actually get to see Vanyel engage in a job rather than just hear about it afterwards. Savil continues to be great, and even Van's brother Mekeal has his shining moments. Everything was just working in this one. Lackey was firing on all cylinders and she proved that when she stays focused and doesn't get wrapped up in unnecessary high school melodrama or half-formed subplots she can actually weave a fantastic story.