** spoiler alert ** I fell in love with Mercedes Lackey's books in grad school, and devoured them for years. Eventually, though, I started to get irritated with some of her writing quirks, like putting *important* things in *italics* instead of letting the reader draw the emphasis from the context, explaining in great detail what people were thinking and feeling rather than showing it, long passages of a character reflecting endlessly on situations, and the repetition of kinks that put me way off (S&M, rape). What I always loved about her, though, was her world-building (though she often gets a bit too involved in it, to the slowing of the plot) and the melodramatic but satisfying catharses she likes to give her characters--maybe not realistic, but we wish they were.

So I picked up Foundation somewhat out of nostalgia, and somewhat out of interest, since this was the history of the country I'd fallen in love with in her earlier books. And as it turns out, this book basically recycles the plot of her first book Arrows of the Queen, with the humble, abused outsider getting a Companion and going to live in the palace complex, discovering the wonders of having friends and learning how the country works, and having (surprise, surprise) just the right skills the monarch needs for the mysterious but threatening conspiracy that seems to be going on just below the surface.

This book has the advantage that 'Arrows' did not of the history of the world being all established--if you go back and read 'Arrows,' some things just don't make sense in light of what Lackey later invented about Valedmar. But it also gives the sense that Lackey is tired of explaining over and over how Companions work, how mental gifts work, etc. The whole second book of the Arrows trilogy was based on the main character's lack of understanding of her mental gifts, and her learning to control them. In this one, the main character's companion shows him how to do it in about a sentence.

Overall, this book just seems like an excuse to explore Valdemar more, this time mining and child slavery, and how to scrub pots properly, and how to celebrate Midwinter in Valdemar. Which is all fine and dandy, but the plot suffers, and the ending isn't an ending at all; more of a breaking off with nothing explained. So...it was fine, but not fabulous.