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47th out of 96 books
—
223 voters
The Black Gryphon (Valdemar: Mage Wars #1)
It is an age when Valdemar is yet unfounded, its organization of Heralds yet unformed, and magic is still a wild and uncontrolled force. Skandranon Rashkae is perhaps the finest specimen of his race, with gleaming ebony feathers, majestic wingspan, keen magesight and sharp intelligence. Courageous, bold, and crafty, Skan is everything a gryphon should be. He is the fulfill...more
Paperback, 464 pages
Published
January 1st 1995
by DAW
(first published 1994)
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Mercedes Lackey has to be one of my favourite fantasy authors ever. Her talent for creating believable magical worlds and elegant, mystical creatures shines in this book. It's a gripping read from start to finish.
This is one of the first books I read in the Valdemar world, and it hooked my quite thoroughly. It is still my favorite of the ones I have read so far.
The characters are engaging, even when they are showing a little flatness. None of their developments are particularly unique - finding confidence, learning to ask for help, learning you can't always have any mate you want all spring immediately to mind. However, they are presented in a unique wrapping, and they are unoriginal because they are ne...more
The characters are engaging, even when they are showing a little flatness. None of their developments are particularly unique - finding confidence, learning to ask for help, learning you can't always have any mate you want all spring immediately to mind. However, they are presented in a unique wrapping, and they are unoriginal because they are ne...more
Rereading the series in chronological order. I haven't touched any of these books in a long time, but I am so fond of them. The gryphon series was never my favorite, but I like most of the main characters well enough and the war battles are exciting. Unfortunately, the characters in the gryphon series never felt like completely different characters to me, since so many of them share the same speech patterns and jokes. I mean, on a daily basis there are at least 3 different species interacting. Y...more
The Black Gryphon was one of the very first fantasy books I ever read, back when I used to live in India, it was a bit difficult to come across SF & Fantasy books and even harder to find out what was good and what wasn't. I admit I was tricked into buying this book because of the nice fantasy cover and the blurb (I was about 13-14 at that time). I hadn't read any fantasy books before, hadn't heard of Tolkien or Brooks or Jordan. I simply wanted to see what this book was about and whether it...more
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Jun 25, 2012
Ward Bond
added it
It is an age when Valdemar is yet unfounded, its organization of Heralds yet unformed, and magic is still a wild and uncontrolled force.Skandranon Rashkae is perhaps the finest specimen of his race, with gleaming ebony feathers, majestic wingspan, keen magesight and sharp intelligence. Courageous, bold, and crafty, Skan is everything a gryphon should be. He is the fulfillment of everything that the Mage of Silence, the human sorcerer called Urtho, intended to achieve when he created these magica
...more
This is part of the Valdemar pre-history, which is slightly problematic for me, since at the end of the day I kinda know how a lot of this is going to end. So it gets a bit of a downgrade for me, because any time an author writes up a bunch of legends in their series and then goes back and writes the full novels it takes a bit of the suspense away. Still the journey is well constructed, so it's not all about the destination.
The characters are likable and engaging (though the major plot "twist" w...more
The characters are likable and engaging (though the major plot "twist" w...more
I love Lackey's Valdemar novels, and this is set in the same world a thousand years before that country's founding, in the midst of a cataclysmic war referred to more than once in that series.
One of Lackey's strengths is her world-building, and that's certainly on display here, with magical races like the gryphons developed in interesting ways, and I liked the title character, Skandranon. The novel kept my interest, was a fairly enjoyable read, and I did go on to read (and mostly enjoy) the nex...more
One of Lackey's strengths is her world-building, and that's certainly on display here, with magical races like the gryphons developed in interesting ways, and I liked the title character, Skandranon. The novel kept my interest, was a fairly enjoyable read, and I did go on to read (and mostly enjoy) the nex...more
It's hard to think of this as a wartime novel. I had a lot of trouble getting into it, despite what should've been a high tension moment of a gryphon trying to sneak into an enemy camp and steal a new magical weapon. Gryphons are constructs, created from magic and yet with the same emotions and intelligence as humans. Skandranon is a sterling member of the species, with the beginning highlighting how he's at the top of his form physically, how brave he is to volunteer for this mission, and such....more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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I found this one to be disappointing. Despite being better than the next two novels in this trilogy (novels which felt almost like 'filler' fare that the author had been forced/obliged to write in order to have a trilogy to publish), it was by and large quite disappointing.
Most important faults of this novel:
1. The MOST important and most glaring glaw is that the reason(s), origin, politics, etc. behind the all-important mage war are never explained. Instead we are simply told that there is an...more
Most important faults of this novel:
1. The MOST important and most glaring glaw is that the reason(s), origin, politics, etc. behind the all-important mage war are never explained. Instead we are simply told that there is an...more
Jul 24, 2011
Renee
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
everyone
Recommended to Renee by:
kristen schwengel
This is a truly brilliant example of a full-blown three-dimensional nonhuman character. Skandranan is proud, vain, reckless, loyal, fierce and completely loveable. He's a gryphon, the ultimate predator who always manages to come back from one-way missions. He's one the front lines of a magic war the good guys are losing. So Skandranan goes on one last heroic mission - that will either save everyone or destroy everything.
I love Mercedes Lackey, and this book is the pinnacle as to why. Her charact...more
I love Mercedes Lackey, and this book is the pinnacle as to why. Her charact...more
First of the trilogy about the "pre-history" of Valdemar. This entails the story of the Mage wars and how the people were scattered in order to save them from the threat of Ma'ar and his evil hordes. The people are aided in their efforts by gryphons...flying carnivores that speak and think in human language. They are raptors but constructed on a larger scale by their beloved Founder Urtho. The Black Gryphon is the main character and the best friend of Amberdrake, a kind of professional counselor...more
A wonderful book. Following in the style of David Eddings and Garth Nix- it jumps straight into the plot with little or no introduction. If you, like I, enjoy this type of novel- then I would DEFINITELY recommend it. The characters, though mostly not introduced in the traditional sense, are created with such fullness that you feel as if you know them from the start. Similarly their world- whilst different to our own- is so matter-of-factly described that it is easy to adapt your way of thinking...more
This moves back to pre-Valdemar times when mages came close to destroying the world in their wars. Gryphons are magical creations, made by the archmage Urtho. Urtho and the good guys are fighting against Ma’ar and the bad guys. The war is not going well. The gryphons want to be free to reproduce on their own and steal the secret from Urtho—his motivations for keeping it secret are good, but the gryphons still resent it. The black gryphon falls in love with a new sort of gryphon who’s developed f...more
I think I'm being a little generous with this review. I read this a long time ago and remembered loving it, so I decided to re-read it a few years later on. It was far more dull than I remembered it being, though it is way better than the sequel which was so boring that I couldn't even make it to the end.
The gryphon characters are decent enough. The main human ones bored me to tears (I actually skipped over most of their scenes). The plot was interesting. The story-telling dragged a many points,...more
The gryphon characters are decent enough. The main human ones bored me to tears (I actually skipped over most of their scenes). The plot was interesting. The story-telling dragged a many points,...more
I really love how Mercedes Lackey writes. I am quickly drawn into her books and feel like I am part of the story.
While this is not the very first book written in the Valdemar Series it is first Chronologically and at first it's hard to see how this book ties in with all the others. Once you really read more you see how they are connected.
I highly recomend this book to those new to Science Fiction/Fantasy. I was never really into this type of writitng before but thanks to Mercedes Lackey and La...more
While this is not the very first book written in the Valdemar Series it is first Chronologically and at first it's hard to see how this book ties in with all the others. Once you really read more you see how they are connected.
I highly recomend this book to those new to Science Fiction/Fantasy. I was never really into this type of writitng before but thanks to Mercedes Lackey and La...more
Never read much of Lackey's stuff before. Essentially, these are YA novels, but I had been wanting to try some of her worlds, and, despite some occasionally too-cutesy emo turns of phrase by the characters, I enjoyed the social constructs Lackey wrote about. It seems obvious TBG was more about describing the lives and social order of the various camp followers and military personnel than the war itself, and the actual time spent on the prosecution of the war seemed a little after-thoughtish, but...more
This book was filled with astonishing detail about the characters, and I loved the illustrations at the start of each chapter. I have the entire trilogy, and have read it only once, but love the books. The gryphons are amazing creatures, and I understand them because I love magical & mythical creatures. I love Zhaneel's triumphs over her problems - being scared and shy, and thinking she was strange. She changed her world, and I liked that I was able to feel her triumph as she faced her fears...more
Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series provides one of the cornerstones of my reading past. After discovering her when quite young, I still follow new additions to the series - nearly twenty years later! I read and re-read these books over and over again throughout my youth, but I haven't re-read this series in its entirety in a long time - and never as an adult. There are some new books added to the series since the last time I read them, so this re-reading project is pretty exciting for me since it...more
*sigh* So I made the "mistake" of picking up one of the Valdemar books to read, and have gotten sucked back in. I haven't read through the entire series in a few years, so I guess it's about time to return to them. It just means that all my free time will be swallowed up by these books again. Not that it is a bad thing, it just means I won't get much else done around the house.
The Black Gryphon is chronologically the first book in the series. However, if you've only read some of the later books,...more
The Black Gryphon is chronologically the first book in the series. However, if you've only read some of the later books,...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Once again when it comes time to review a fantasy book I'm resorting back to the publisher's synopsis. There is just so much going on in this book (and the series) that I'm afraid this review would be so long that everyone reading this would age ten years before they were done. The synopsis gives a pretty good idea of what happens in the book even though it doesn't even begin to tell you everything.
The only other plot point I wanted to quickly mention was what comes at the end. As you could pro...more
The only other plot point I wanted to quickly mention was what comes at the end. As you could pro...more
The advantage to rereading the Valdemar books in internal chronological order is that I get my least favorite ones out of the way first. I do not like the Gryphon trilogy much at all - Larry Dixon's influence is far too noticeable, and while his illustrations are nice enough, the man can't write. The result is a really choppy book, with some good parts - I love the idea of a professional therapist/masseuse/high-class escort, because we all have needs, and they're very much intertwined, I think....more
I've decided to reread Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar novels in chronological order. I don't remember when I first read this, although more than a decade would be a fair guess (which was why I didn't leave a review when I first rated it here on goodreads). I find my rating remains the same, but now I have a more detailed opinion to go with it:
The Black Gryphon is Skandranon, an intelligent creation of Ortho, the Mage of Silence. He is just one piece of an army attempting to withstand the forces of M...more
The Black Gryphon is Skandranon, an intelligent creation of Ortho, the Mage of Silence. He is just one piece of an army attempting to withstand the forces of M...more
I adored this in high school, though I've since found her other books to be repetitive and lacking. (Poor-little-me usually teen protagonist feels all oppressed by the mean grown-ups, no one understands me, insert magical power, enter flawless and all-accepting mentor(s), I am vindicated by my magicness, bla bla bla). This one at least had a war-story to follow, though I'll have to re-read it sometime to see whether it really was any better than the rest or if that's just my rosy nostalgia talki...more
I actually read this sixteen years ago when it came out, but I was a teenager then and it's interesting to re-read what I used to like. Lackey is preachier than I remember, and there's the common thread of what I read as her humor in all of the characters. I hesitate to say that her characters are one- or two-dimensional, but there's a sameness to her characters, or archetypes to which she sticks.
That said, she is a great world-builder and I love the world she has created. The sense of it, the r...more
That said, she is a great world-builder and I love the world she has created. The sense of it, the r...more
This book had a lot to do, introducing the reader to a new world and many new species, so it is not surprising that it was difficult to get a handle on what is going on as the book unfolds. By the end of the book, however, the reader is fully invested and wanting to move on to the second in the series, even though the first in the series doesn't end terribly well. It certainly ended better than expected at one point. The illustrations are wonderful, although the placement was a bit misleading fr...more
It's really hard not to like a series about gryphons.
Another of Merecedes Lackey's Valdemar trilogies, this one is set earlier in Valdemar's history. That makes it kind of an interesting counterpoint to the other Valdemar books if you want to read all her other books in the series. Otherwise it's just fun because it's about gryphons who are smart and people-friendly but also exactly what you'd expect out of giant raptors. It makes for some amusing moments.
Another of Merecedes Lackey's Valdemar trilogies, this one is set earlier in Valdemar's history. That makes it kind of an interesting counterpoint to the other Valdemar books if you want to read all her other books in the series. Otherwise it's just fun because it's about gryphons who are smart and people-friendly but also exactly what you'd expect out of giant raptors. It makes for some amusing moments.
So I am rereading the Valdemar books at Aaron's urging, as he is going to read them with me. I love the Valdemar books, but this is definitely one of the weaker trilogies in my memory and that held true as I was rereading it. There is a lot of over-explaining characters' inner thoughts and motivations. However, I think that Lackey may very well be one of the best world-builders in all of fantasy. That's right. I said it. We'll see what I think as we read on.
I read the previous books set in the Valdemar universe, and I enjoyed them, but "the black gryphon" is definitelly better than everything I have read previously. The previous books suffered from having a very episodic structure, they often felt like a collection of short stories set in the same universe. This is definitelly not the case for the first volume of the Mage Wars trilogy. The plot is well constructed and developed, and the book is quite hard to put down. The book can be read alone wit...more
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Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70's she worked as an artist's model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts &...more
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