Exile’s Valor

A Novel of Valdemar

By: Mercedes Lackey

Narrated by: Paul Woodson

Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

This stand-alone novel in the Valdemar series continues the story of prickly weapons-master Alberich. Once a heroic Captain in the army of Karse, a kingdom at war with Valdemar, Alberich becomes one of Valdemar's Heralds. Despite prejudice against him, he becomes the personal protector of young Queen Selenay. But can he protect her from the dangers of her own heart?

©2003 Mercedes R. Lackey (P)2019 Tantor

Only one way it could be better.

I will probably say this is a lot of reviews: The only way this audio book could have been better is if it was co-narrated.
Male voice actors rarely can pull off a convincing female voice, and vice versa.
Other than that, this is a superb performance of an excellent story.

Awesome Back Story Filler

First, I am writing this review for both Exile’s Honor and Exile’s Valor, since I think of them as a set. Second, I disagree with Audible’s decision to list the two books as books 4 and 5 in the Heralds of Valdemar series, as these two stories actually pre-date the story in the ‘Arrows of the Queen’ story both chronologically and by actual publish date. ‘Arrows of the Queen’ was the first Valdemar book, the other two were written years later.
Having said all that , I lived these two books. They filled in a number of the ‘back stories’ referred to in ‘Arrows of the Queen’, among other Valdemar books and gave much greater ‘life’ to some significant secondary characters from other books.
Now, if only Audible could get around to publishing ‘By The Sword’, another one of those ‘bridge’ books between other Valdemar series, one which I believe may be the best Valdemar book ever written.

Valderma MY FAVORITE

This is about a great hero from another country who is rescued and becomes a Harold with a valent Companion of Valdema. A great leader and trainer for all. I fell in love with his understanding. I love this story and believe you will too not to mention the amazing story .

good story...

the story was good, the audio quality was top notch, but was not happy with inconsistencies in pronunciations that changed line to line and was not consistent with the rest of the books in the series.

Skip this one.

It's good to know that Mercedes Lackey is as human as her heralds ;-] This one book you can go ahead and skip.

tldr, the plot is absurdly flimsy, painfully so at times, and the book is missing the chief component that makes every other story of Valdamar great - character development. Aside from one side character who is a bit arrogant in an early chapter and then who returns fully reformed in one of the last few chapters to help save the day... no one grows/evolves/changes.

If you do choose to skip this one book, there are only four facts that I think might be relevant to the future story. Here they are:

SPOILER WARNING

1. Companions are fallable - they're just about on par with their heralds sometimes. The particular lapse in this book is that the queen's companion entirely ignores the queen's knee-jerk infatuation with a handsome lover. First, she thinks it might be good for the queen since it's distracting her from the depression of losing her father. Then, when the infatuation deepens, because she (the companion) is inexperienced with love and sex herself, she is too shy to say anything to the queen about how caddy the lover is being.

2. Every single character in the story learns about the betrayal of the queen that this lover intends before the queen does. None of them ever confront her. Instead, they all get together and agree she wouldn't believe them if confronted. Then they stand by for a year and privately train to protect her while she marries, gets with child, and idly continues trusting the man right up until he attacks her. No one even offers themselves as a confidant to lend an ear or help her cope with the lover's antics.

3. Alberich and Misty partner up and it's very sweet but also very bland. Misty digs into official espionage work a little, which makes Alberich very nervous, but she's damn good at it. Her espionage is the highlight of the book IMO, but there's only a few pages of it.

4. A sport somewhere in the vicinity of hockey or polo or lacross is born of Alberich spontaneously making Calvin ball the object of one day's training plan. The sport is called "Hurly" and eventually Alberich takes the best Hurly players in the colegium and trains them as an impromptu secret guard for the queen. But, since it'd be weird for the main character (Alberich?) to not be in the last climactic scene of the book, he actually winds up accompanying all of these trainees when they rush straight out of practice to save the day, rescuing the queen.

I like the Valdemar Series ... for many years.

How is collegium supposed to be pronounced? That is just about the only problem I have with the narrator. I shudder just about everytime I hear it.

listen to this whole series.

these were great to listen to, however, they are introduced in the wrong order. listen to the Exile books first. then the Queens books won't be spoiled.

A Fime Romance Novel

This book is listed as being in the genres of classics, fantasy , science fiction , epic, and adventure. After listening to about half of it, I gave up on it. I found it primarily a romance novel with secondary emphases upon what people are wearing and eating. It is a fine romance novel if that’s what you are looking for.

The continuing story of Alberich

Alberich is one of my favorite characters. I love his back story and how he came to Valdemar. This also includes the year after the death of Selenay's father and her struggles. The narrator was great.

love the background on Alberecht!!

great continuation of the story, with excellent character development and interactions. I love it! a+

Great story

Enjoyable story. Great author and narrator. Have available audio books. Hoping the other books become audio books. Would be great if this narrator is used for the other boldest books.