A song for two voices - book 6
Aug. 4th, 2018 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swimmer963 posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
last_herald_mageThis story is getting HARD to write and I'm not super happy with this draft yet, especially re: pacing, there is way less intense action and it's much more a bunch of loosely connected side plots than I would prefer, and it probably doesn't end in the right place, but it's already taken me forever and is at like 180,000 words, so here, have a rough draft :)
(Note: I have made a bunch of changes to book 5 since the last draft I posted here, which means there isn't perfect continuity between the old book 5 and this section. I've listed major plot-relevant changes below, and I've also linked to the more recent and improved version of book 5.)
Book 6 MOBI
Book 6 EPUB
Book 6 RTF
Covers:
*Savil and Van trying to patch things up after the events of the end of book 5. Drama.
*Some clarification on what Leareth is up to, in case you were curious.
*Lots of magical research.
*Stef and Medren have adventures.
*Political drama. Vanyel is not great at politics.
*There miiiiight be a side plot where Need shows up.
*Jisa getting trained as a Mindhealer.
*Checking in Lissa, Karis, Shavri, Tran, etc etc etc (there are too many characters in this series and they are all amazing and deserve their own side-story, damn it Mercedes Lackey)
New Book 5 MOBI
New Book 5 EPUB
New Book 5 RTF
Major plot changes made from last draft of book 5:
-Rolan doesn't come back right away, and Tran gets re-Chosen by Delian instead. (Justification: I think it loses a lot of the impact of Taver's death to have Rolan immediately show up as a replacement)
-Jaysen still dies but no longer calls Final Strike (because my friend thought there it was too much "a chain reaction of spontaneously combusting Heralds")
-MOST IMPORTANT: the mystery of Leren's assassination attempt is resolved within book 5 and Vanyel finds out it was Leareth's plot. (I mean, I *think* this was canon already, but main thing is that Van already knows what's up by the beginning of book 6)
(Note: I have made a bunch of changes to book 5 since the last draft I posted here, which means there isn't perfect continuity between the old book 5 and this section. I've listed major plot-relevant changes below, and I've also linked to the more recent and improved version of book 5.)
Book 6 MOBI
Book 6 EPUB
Book 6 RTF
Covers:
*Savil and Van trying to patch things up after the events of the end of book 5. Drama.
*Some clarification on what Leareth is up to, in case you were curious.
*Lots of magical research.
*Stef and Medren have adventures.
*Political drama. Vanyel is not great at politics.
*There miiiiight be a side plot where Need shows up.
*Jisa getting trained as a Mindhealer.
*Checking in Lissa, Karis, Shavri, Tran, etc etc etc (there are too many characters in this series and they are all amazing and deserve their own side-story, damn it Mercedes Lackey)
New Book 5 MOBI
New Book 5 EPUB
New Book 5 RTF
Major plot changes made from last draft of book 5:
-Rolan doesn't come back right away, and Tran gets re-Chosen by Delian instead. (Justification: I think it loses a lot of the impact of Taver's death to have Rolan immediately show up as a replacement)
-Jaysen still dies but no longer calls Final Strike (because my friend thought there it was too much "a chain reaction of spontaneously combusting Heralds")
-MOST IMPORTANT: the mystery of Leren's assassination attempt is resolved within book 5 and Vanyel finds out it was Leareth's plot. (I mean, I *think* this was canon already, but main thing is that Van already knows what's up by the beginning of book 6)
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Date: 2018-08-05 02:53 pm (UTC)(Also Rolan is going to find out some stuff. I seem to have ended up thinking of Rolan as less experienced and capable than Taver, not sure why. Anyway need to decide how he reacts too! Yfandes is definitely going to get yelled at, because, well, she just up and *left* her Chosen for days without even warning anyone, that is pretty unacceptable, Van's downward spiral after she left was very predictable, and she is INCREDIBLY luck that Savil and Melody started looking for Van when they did.)
I haven't really decided where to go with Dara – she gets basically no characterization in this section. Although *something* interesting is going to happen with her long-range Foresight, I just haven't figured out *what*.
Yeah, Van's mind looks really, really messed up to a Mindhealer. I chickened out of describing it from Jisa's POV bc I wasn't sure I could do it justice and leaving it to the reader's imagination seemed maybe better. Do you think more of Jisa and Van's relationship would be good to add to this book, or more of an explore-later thing? (I think she's just now getting to the age where they could start to have real intellectual conversations, which obv is very important to Van for connecting to people. Also in canon she deduces him being her biological father when she's 12, which is soonish and I'll cover that in the next section). Jisa has definitely inherited Van's stubbornness, and honestly I think she got a double dose of it – Shavri can be hella stubborn as well.
The next part is still a formless pile of meta – obviously Van dealing with the revelation from Leareth and the impact on his relationships with Yfandes and Savil is going to be a big part of it, but I haven't even started on an outline. (I had hoped book 7 would be the last book, but it seems clear at this point that there's a LOT of the story left).