Oathblood

by Mercedes Lackey

Book Overview

This exciting new anthology includes a new novella featuring Mercedes Lackey 's most popular heroines, Tarma (one of the sword-sworn and most feared of all warriors) and Kethry (who wields magic and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0886777739
• ISBN13: 9780886777739
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Daw Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 7.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Superb Short Stories!

This is a book of short stories and is quite fun - the only downside is that a few of the chapters from _The Oathbound_ are repeated. Still, I hadn't remembered most of this book, which made it a great re-read. It's nice to see how everyone turns out. All in all, it is a good collection of short stories - the short intros by Mercedes Lackey added a lot too.

funny and heart-warming stories

I was surprised when I brought this book home after buying it. I had read The Oathbound and Oathbreakers (the first 2 books about Tarma and Kethry), and had expected this to be another novel. However, after reading a few of these shorter tales, I realized that they were almost as good as one long story. They were ingenious, funny at times, full of what I had come to expect from Mercedes Lackey. At the beginning you finally receive the story of Tarma and Kethry's first meeting and their oath to Tarma's goddess. At the end was a satisfying "mini-novel" regarding both Tarma and Kethry after they had settled into running their school. (if you have read the other 2 books, you will know where they got the land and buildings). This book stands alone or supplements the other novels. A great collection of stories overall.

A good short story collection

To clear up some misconceptions that seem to have arisen: this is a collection of short stories featuring Tarma and Kethry. It is NOT a novel, and I don't know why anyone mistook it for one. To judge its quality fairly, each story has to be weighed on its own merits (instead of expecting 'narrative continuity' which is only applicable to novels).To get the individual earlier stories which have already been in print, you would have to own Sword & Sorceress 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, all of which are (where still in print) somewhat difficult to get, at least where I am. Getting a back issue of Fantasy Book Magazine I leave to the experts. Unless you've consistently collected Sword & Sorceress, the _Oathblood_ collection is the simplest way to get these stories. Only 2 out of the 11 were blended into _The Oathbound_."Sword-Sworn" - First appeared in Sword & Sorceress III (they thought it was exceptionally good, accepting it despite their avoidance of rape-and-revenge stories). The tale of the massacre of clan Tale'sedrin, from which Tarma emerged as the last survivor, and its consequences, including Tarma's first meeting with Kethry. Tarma's fiance, her family, her voice, and her old life have all been destroyed - so she petitions Kal'enel to become one of Her Sword-Sworn, the only Shin'a'in who have the right to cry blood-feud. All she wants is to live long enough to avenge the dead - but she listens to her teachers' advice not to reject help along the way."Turnabout" - First appeared in Fantasy Book Magazine (Sword & Sorceress received it at the same time as Sword-Sworn and preferred the former). This is the tale of the song "Threes", which actually appeared first (in _Arrow's Fall_, for one). Lackey didn't have the original song with her when writing the story, so she later created Leslac (the bard who always gets things wrong) to explain why the song didn't quite match the story. The story was later written into _The Oathbound_ as chapter 8, because the Thalhkarsh story would have been incomplete without it. The *real* story is given here: Tarma, Kethry, and Warrl were *paid* to track down a bandit gang, by the families of some of the victims. Kethry's poetic justice, alas, comes back to haunt them (see _The Oathbound_)."The Making of a Legend" - First appeared in Sword & Sorceress VI. Leslac's debut, as he produces "The Leslac Version" (see the songs at the end of _Oathbreakers_). Leslac likes to portray the ladies as shining heroes of light - a nuisance to a pair of hard-working mercenaries trying to find paid work! (Until he began following their career, he couldn't make a decent living, so he won't give up and go away. Bardic immunity protects him from Tarma's knife.)"Keys" - First appeared in Sword & Sorceress V; a locked-room mystery, later written into _The Oathbound_ as part of chapter 6. Lady Myria has been framed for her husband's murder and now faces execution. Need brings Tarma and Kethry into it, so that Tarma acts as

A collection of Short Stories

I found this Collection of short stories intriguing. I had never read the Sword and the Sorceress Series by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley so I was Ecstatic that Misty had decided to put MOST of the stories of Tarma and Kethry into a book. I read her intro and found that this was full of stories: Ones she had published, Ones she had written for the heck of it, ones that she had written when she was having a bad day and wanted to place the blame on someone. I am surprised at some of the previous reviews of this collection. According to Misty's Intro, some of the stories hadn't been published previously and the two books Oathbound and Oathbreaker were not even displayed in full inside the book.Even if I HAD read all the stories previously (which I hadn't because I could not find any of them) I am grateful that Misty has decided to put them together into One Easy to find book.I wish the best of luck and good wishes to Misty on her story writing.

wonderful!

this fills in the blanks for everyone wondering what happened to tarma and kethry, in between "oathbreakers" and "by the sword," and then some!