{"id":1584,"date":"2015-04-03T10:40:29","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T14:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1584"},"modified":"2015-04-03T10:40:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T14:40:29","slug":"book-review-foundation-by-mercedes-lackey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1584","title":{"rendered":"Book review:  Foundation by Mercedes Lackey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/463421.Foundation\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1348767800m\/463421.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"Foundation (Valdemar: Collegium Chronicles, #1)\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/463421.Foundation\">Foundation<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/8685.Mercedes_Lackey\">Mercedes Lackey<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1242896693\">3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I really enjoy Mercedes Lackey&#8217;s books, especially her early Valdemar books (the Herald-Mage series and the Oathbreakers series). I so wanted to really like this book and, while I do like &#8220;Foundation,&#8221; it has some serious flaws that prevented me from enjoying the book as much as I would have liked.<br \/>\nTo begin with, this book takes place shortly after the Herald-Mage series and before all of the other Valdemar books. The writing is vintage Lackey&#8211;she writes fluidly and the characters are well drawn. The plot is generally good, but it&#8217;s with the plot that I have the biggest issues.<br \/>\nClearly, this series was plotted out as a multi-book series from the beginning. As a result, rather than having a self-contained plot within the book with a narrative arc that reaches beyond the one book, there is no self-contained plot to speak of. Or, rather, the plot leaves the reader hanging, with many unanswered questions and unexplained plot points that are presumably answered in subsequent books.<br \/>\nI am a curmudgeonly enough reader not to want to read the subsequent books because of my annoyance at being left hanging. I like multi-book series well enough, but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s too much to ask the author to make each book in a series stand on its own as well.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/1396812-may\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foundation by Mercedes Lackey My rating: 3 of 5 stars I really enjoy Mercedes Lackey&#8217;s books, especially her early Valdemar books (the Herald-Mage series and the Oathbreakers series). I so wanted to really like this book and, while I do like &#8220;Foundation,&#8221; it has some serious flaws that prevented me from enjoying the book as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40],"tags":[336,229,231],"class_list":["post-1584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-books","tag-fantasy","tag-mercedes-lackey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-py","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1586,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1584\/revisions\/1586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}