The Lost in Academia guide to books you shouldn't read, Part II.

The Lost One will now ruminate on the grand disappointment of...One Good Knight, by Mercedes Lackey, recommended to the Lost One by...Well Amazon.com. To be fair, it was the Lost One's choice to pick up the book, no one forced him, either physically, or psychologically to read it. Still, the Lost One failed, so everybody cries. While the Lost One is on this whole, "being fair" kick, he might as well acknowledge that their are different levels on which the book is bad, the first (and most important, as the Lost One is a raving ego maniac) is the failure of the book to live up to the Lost One's personal expectations, as well as the actual disappointment that came with reading a story that could have been done decently, but was not.

So, okay the Lost One had personal expectations that influenced his enjoyment of One Good Knight. The only reason the Lost One picked it up was because (as any longtime reader [of which the Lost One has none] can tell you) the Lost One is a bit of an Anglo-phile. So the opportunity to read a novel about St. George (Britain's patron Saint) and the Dragon was just fine by the Lost One. However , the book is not about St. George, despite the jacket, and cover promising, both Dragon and virtuous dragon slayer, named George. Instead One Good Knight carries on a tradition from Ms. Lackey's other works of having a powerful force of nature in this pretend word, called...Well, The Tradition. In Ms. Lackey's world, precedent is not to be ignored as any event that happens more then once is bound to influence events later down the line, I.E. all the stories say that when the virtuous knight saves the fair maiden, said fair maiden will fall in love with the knight. So by naming the knight "George" Ms. Lackey is nodding at tradition, but not really retelling the story. Which, of course, was terribly annoying. There is a similar nod to Perseus and Andromeda which, again, comes to naught. Annoying.

Still, annoyance aside, the Lost One could have enjoyed the story that was there, but the execution was just too poor. The book plods along at a snails pace, and gets so wrapped up in the life of the heroine that one is praying for something to happen (not that the Lost One wasn't reading the book going, "the Princess is losing her favorite maid, NOOOOO! She likes her new one, YAAAY! Her duties at court are boring!! She finds a way around that!!" but you, know...Something needs to happen...For the kids). And when things finally begin to pick up, the pace goes from something resembling that of a snail, to more like a frog. Jump to a major event, then wait, and wait and wait, and wait, and jump to a major event, etc.

What was even more infuriating was the repetition of the story, and the waiting for characters to figure out what the reader had known for chapters. It put the Lost One in mind of an episode of Friends in which Joey and Chandler are told something dismaying and we watch as Chandler instantly grasped the news, while Joey ponders. Like Chandler, the reader is often left wanting to yell, "Get there faster!" At the same time, events that should have pages and pages of story (like the romance that is central to the story) are briefly discussed and come, seemingly from out of no where. Now the Lost One is not anti-romance, but good great Maker, there exists such a thing as "foreshadowing" and "character development". Annoying.

Finally, we have the fairy tale quality where the virtuous easily triumph, and villainous are quickly vanquished. The Heck!?! That's all you had to do!?!!! Why didn't you do that first and let the Lost One spend the interim time doing something interesting?!!! *Sigh* Well, no one to blame but the Lost One. Until next time.