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    Oathblood
    Oathblood
    Oathblood
    Audiobook11 hours

    Oathblood

    Written by Mercedes Lackey

    Narrated by Christa Lewis

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This exciting 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 weapons for the greater good), whose fates are suddenly bound together in blood by the powers that control their destinies. Also included in this unique volume is the complete collection of Lackey's short stories about these two brave sisters as they answer the call of their destinies with sword and sorcery.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 5, 2019
    ISBN9781977386151
    Oathblood
    Author

    Mercedes Lackey

    Mercedes entered this world on June 24, 1950, in Chicago, had a normal childhood and graduated from Purdue University in 1972. During the late 70's she worked as an artist's model and then went into the computer programming field, ending up with American Airlines in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to her fantasy writing, she has written lyrics for and recorded nearly fifty songs for Firebird Arts & Music, a small recording company specializing in science fiction folk music. Also known as Misty Lackey.

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    Reviews for Oathblood

    4/5

    446 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It keeps you wanting to read more. Hope more is available.
    • 5/5
      Great read. Mercedes Lackey never disappoints. I am always excited to go back to an old friend of a book.
    • 5/5
      This is a collection of short stories featuring Kethry and Tarma. Some I had read in anthologies. but others were totally new to me. Two had been subsumed into Oathbound. Those I skimmed as I had just read that book and they were nearly the same.Both the characters and the author matured and the stories steadily improved. In the end, I could tell that Tarma and Kethry knew they were good at what they did, but also didn't consider themselves "real" heroes. This quotation sums it up: "There’s your real heroes—the people who keep coping, keep trying, no matter how many blows Fate takes at them. Nobody’ ll make a song about them, but they’re heroes all the same."If you read and enjoyed Oathbound and Oathbreakers, you'll enjoy finding out more about Tarma and Kethry.
    • 4/5
      This is technically listed as the third part of the 'Vows and Honor' series of books featuring Kethry amd Trama, Lackey's answer to the fighting heroines that began to feature in the eighties and nineties. While similar to other females in the genre, this pair of mercenaries are somewhat more realistic but I believe that thinking any female fighter being an equal to a to a man one on one with the same sort of weapons falls foul of biology to a greater degree than any fantasy writer is willing to accept.Despite that, most of these tales are good fun at the very least and sometimes thoughtful and not too preachy. One of the things I found difficult in these stories was to date them in terms of the rest of the Valdemar Cycle but later books in the Cycle make it fairly clearthat these are a generation or two before the original Heraldic books.
    • 4/5
      This is a Tarma and Kethry short story collection - including the story of their meeting, which really would have made sense as the beginning of Oathbound. We get bits and pieces of it in that and the middle book, but it's nice to see it all laid out.

      The stories are a mixed bag, as might be expected. A couple of them are the basis for scenes in Oathbound (more or less exactly - I didn't bother to reread them, in fact.) A couple of them are basically concept pieces - a poisoning mystery, a Murphy's Law farce, and couple of explorations of fantasy tropes. Those are generally fine, although slight. The ones I like best are the ones set later in the duo's career - the excursion into Valdemar to play with horses is a great deal of fun, and the final story involving Kethry's kids is top-notch.

      Overall it's a fun collection, and probably works as well or better than Oathbound. Tarma and Kethry are just perfectly designed for short, episodic adventures.
    • 4/5
      Oh, Mercedes Lackey's Renaissance-esque horse-loving people, mercenaries with hearts of gold. I used to own all her books once upon a time, and I kept this Tarma and Kethry collection because I think those two garnered a high proportion of her best writing in the '80s and '90s.
    • 5/5
      Oathblood is a collection of short stories featuring Tarma and Kethry. The first story in the book is the story of how they met. Not all of the stories include Warl since some predate the time of his bonding with Tarma. My favorite story was one that took Tarma, Warl, and to of the former Sunhawks to Forest Reach to train some misbehaving horses. Overall, this was a great book.
    • 3/5
      There are some ups and downs to this book. On the up-side, this book is a bunch of short stories and doesn't pretend to be anything but that, no half-hearted attempts to string them all together into something resembling a coherent and continuing plot. It was nice to see a few interesting adventures that Tarma and Kethry have suffered through, particularly the one inspired by Murphy's Law.Also, I finally got to read the story in which the two main characters met in the first place.The down side is that about half the book consisted of stories that had been seen in other places, most notably the first book of the Vows and Honor trilogy. This would be fine if it was a standalone book unconnected to another series, but as it was, I'd already read some of what was being presented to me, with few to no changed in the presentation between the original short story and the time it made it to the first book of the trilogy. Rather disappointing, I think, to read what I'd already read, especially when I was expecting new things.What was interesting, though, was to see the obvious progression of the author's writing talents. From the earlier stories to the later ones, it's easy to see Lackey's style become more solid, more confident as she grows into it. Her sense of humour is evident throughout, though; some things just never change.Overall, I'm glad I can say that I've finally read this trilogy, which I think means I've read all the Valdemar novels except for one (and that one's in the mail as we speak). I'm equally glad, though, to say that I don't have to read it again; this was definitely my least favourite trilogy in the series. Decent, but not the best.
    • 4/5
      Oathblood, unlike Oathbreakers, is a collection of short stories involving Tarma and Kethry rather than an integrated novel. There is some overlap in stories from the first volume of the Vows and Honor series, Oathbound. I didn't feel cheated, but then I find these two of Lackey's most appealing characters, and there was enough new material that even if you removed those stories from this volume, you'd still have a good value for your money. These stories deal not only with some gaps in the other books, but Kethry's progeny that are adopted into Tarma's clan post the events of Oathbreakers. Although I think the previous two books are better introductions to these two characters and Lackey's world, if you like the first two books involving them, I think you'll enjoy this book as well, but I'd definitely not start here.
    • 4/5
      All the Tarma and Kethry short stories - including the beginning of the whole thing, what happened to Tarma when the raiders hit her Clan. They're not in chronological order - may be in published order, but I can't tell. It makes it a little difficult to interweave them with Oathbound and Oathbreakers, but it can be done - and makes those stories richer to know the rest of the events that are casually referred to in the books. Lots of favorites in here - the first one, and 'A Woman's Weapon' about the tanneries, and 'Threes' (which I find particularly amusing because I knew the song before I read the story!), and 'The Way It Should Have Been' (not sure if that's the actual name of either story or song - but it is the point of both). And some of the late ones - the Firebird one, and the one about the school and their kids...lovely. I don't like the one about the bear, but that's kind of the point of the story. Very rich, all of it.