Monday, February 3, 2020

Abi Normal

So, as is prone to happening, I had missed the release of Mercedes Lackey's continuation of her Family Spies Series, Eye Spy, following around the second child of Megs and Amily, Abi.

Like her brother before her, Abi has a gift that doesn't quite fit in with the mind-magic so prevalent in Valdemar. In her case, she discovers early on she can detect stress in architecture, and indeed, figure out when something is going to collapse. She figures this out when the bridge she's crossing starts to go.

From there, she gets enrolled in with the Artificers and learns to use her gift for other things, like finding hidden rooms. Mind you, while in school, she also has to defend herself from Dudley, who ends up saying the quiet part out loud. (Much of Dudley's actions seem to be a cypher for certain people. "When you're rich, they let you get away with it.")

And then, after coming up with her Masterwork, a bridge to replace the one that collapsed at the beginning, she, along with 3 other Master Artificers get sent to a strip outside Valdemar and Menmellith that wants to join Valdemar. Unfortunately, while things go well at first, their third stop results in agents who came ahead before and ruined the reputation of the Valdemarians.

As we go about trying to resolve that, we find out the Merc escorting them is a lesbian, and after she kissed Abi, we find that Abi is Asexual.

While I enjoyed reading this, and indeed enjoyed some rather thinly veiled political commentary and a few hidden memes, the plot stretches over several years, and it reads less like a novel than a series of connected stories. Still fun.

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