The Oathbound by Mercedes Lackey

Maybe this is cheating. The title belongs to the first half of a double entitled Vows and Honor, but I don't think I could get through the whole thing in one go. I'll give it a few weeks and see if I want to go back for the other half. I found it in a box, out where I have been going through boxes and trying to thin things out. I don't think it had ever been read. Part of my problem with it, of course, is that it is on paper, and that is so much more difficult to read - even with my new eyes. I've gotten used to being able to read and do something else with my hands at the same time - and back in the day, my reading distance was a lot more flexible.

Never mind. Now, about the book. It is set in the Valdemar universe, but in a different part of the world, so we run into magic and critters than do not inhabit the Valdemar stories beyond a few allusions. I don't really have a problem with that, but I think it could have been better set in a world of its own. And we have the mismatched sworn pair of a swordswoman, Tarma, and a sorceress, Kethry, the whole business vaguely reminiscent of Bradley's Order of Renunciates (AKA Free Amazons) on Darkover and the mismatched pair in Thendara House.

Part of the problem is that the original story was published in an anthology under Bradley's name called Sword and Sorceress, the first of such anthologies, which now number nineteen. A second story about the pair appears in the fourth of these anthologies. This pair of books is set in the period between those two stories, but unless you happened to have gotten hold of that first anthology (which came out in 1986 and is now out of print, but is probably somewhere in my father's vast collection), you don't really know how the story started.

Another problem is that it doesn't really hold together as a novel. It is so episodic that each chapter could almost, but not quite, stand alone. It is still good - it just isn't up to Lackey's best. It is a little uncomfortable to read a book by a writer some of whose work you have reread routinely for years and find it wanting. I suppose nobody hits a home run every time they are at bat.