The Barnes & Noble Review
Sun in Glory, a fantastic anthology of 13 Valdemar stories featuring Mercedes Lackey's white-clad Heralds and their sentient, horselike Companions, includes original works by Michelle West, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Tanya Huff, Judith Tarr, and Rosemary Edghill, among others.

"Errold's Journey," a story by 12-year-old prodigy Catherine S. McMullen, chronicles the historic events leading up to the founding of Errold's Grove, an isolated village in northern Valdemar that is the setting for numerous Lackey novels. Nancy Asire's "The Cat Who Came to Dinner" explores the Karse legend of Reulan and the Firecat, a story of how the great Son of the Sun was chosen by a creature straight out of myth.

The pièce de résistance, however, is a novella by Lackey entitled "Homecoming," a story about Alberich, the enigmatic weaponsmaster who teaches all young Heralds-in-training the art of warfare. As an exile of Karse, Valdemar's neighboring archnemesis, Alberich's longtime dream of seeing peace between the two warring kingdoms has yet to come to fruition. But when a visiting Priest-Mage brings news of a new Karse leader and her radical political reforms, Alberich is given the opportunity to visit his childhood home after decades in exile. Will there finally be an end to the bloodshed, or is this just an elaborate ploy to murder the Great Traitor?

Fans of Lackey's epic Valdemar series will devour this superb anthology. Of the 13 stories included, there is no weak link -- an attribute exceedingly rare in collections of this sort. Highly recommended. Paul Goat Allen

Genre: Fantasy