Kit Walker

For what may be obvious reasons, I recently read every story in the original Sherlock Holmes canon — all four novels and 56 short stories.

(This is not bragging. 56 is not that many. Harlan Ellison, one of my favourite writers, is said to have written over 1 000 short stories in his lifetime. You’re welcome to try and verify that claim, but you’ll probably get distracted by the “Controversies and disputes” section of his Wikipedia page.)

The Holmes stories were written before we as a culture fell from god’s grace and invented sequel hooks. As a result, I was struck by the fact that some of the canon’s most famous characters appear quite suddenly and don’t stick around for very long.

An example: if you asked the average person to name three Sherlock Holmes characters, they’d probably say “Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty.” But Professor Moriarty only factors into two stories, and personally appears in just one: "The Final Problem," in which he pops up out of nowhere to kill Holmes. The second story, The Valley of Fear, takes place before "The Final Problem" but was published 21 years later, establishing Moriarty as a recurring threat well after the fact.

Another example: if you asked the average person to name three Sherlock Holmes characters, but stipulated at least one of them had to be a woman, they might say "Holmes, Watson, and Irene Adler." Because Adler is the Woman — the woman who bested Sherlock Holmes.

And finally, this work is also dedicated in furious disgust to ridding our world of the influence of everyone complicit in using the pandemic as a tool for their own power, profits, and political maneuvering. You pushed hateful agendas while the bodies were stacked up. We all lost people dear to our hearts because of you parasitic, heartless creatures. If you had souls, you'd be damned.

-from the dedication of Beyond, by Mercedes Lackey.

I think it's safe to say Mercedes Lackey is sick of this shit.

This summer, I started rereading the Valdemar books. This wasn't prompted by the recent announcement that a television series is being made; I was just one of many hit with Apollo's big rubber dodgeball of prophecy this year. I can't really say what brought on my impulse to revisit the series. Maybe the fact that I had just moved to a new country to start a new job inspired a need to latch onto something familiar.

I first started reading the Valdemar books as a young teenager. I came across a copy of The White Gryphon on a thrift store bookshelf and was immediately attracted by three things on the cover:

1. A lavishly-detailed painting of a gryphon,
2. A title in purple stamped foil,
3. A $2 price tag.

Needless to say, I was hooked.