Magic's Promise (The Last Herald-Mage #2)
by Mercedes Lackey
This was only of the only Valdemar trilogies I didn't get to before the age of 18, which is the main reason that after a half dozen attempts I've never finished it. I don't know why I'm determined to do so right now, but I've made it to 40%, so I gotta keep going.
There are some cringeworthy racist themes, especially around the Tayledras and their lizardy house elves (who fortunately do not appear in this book, so far). Also, Lackey's characters always think too much, but it's not as egregious in this one as in some of her others (including [b:Magic's Pawn|28759|Magic's Pawn (Valdemar Last Herald-Mage #1)|Mercedes Lackey|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345854036s/28759.jpg|3230346], which is exactly as dreadful as I remembered). Vanyel's still emo as fuck, of course.
On the other hand, it's bang-up queer rep for 1989-90, and Lackey's are the only books with queer characters I can remember finding in my childhood library, even if 95% of them are men. (There were some lesbian bit characters, iirc, but I don't recall anyone important? Nearly all the protags are male, that doesn't help.) Still, as Vanyel muses, there's no cute fantasy slang for "bi" in his culture. There's also a brief anecdote about Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Book, flamboyant but straight.
The plot has a bad case of "Oops." About a dozen times, Vanyel thinks to himself "I should make sure I don't do that, that would be a really bad idea." Ten to twenty pages later... oops? And then what he does turns out to be not only not a disaster, but plot critical. That's fine except for the part where he tells himself it's a bad idea to talk to a teenage victim of severe abuse when he's feeling very upset himself, and then he does it anyway. Vanyel takes his rage out on the kid in a way he knows is unworthy and kind of emotionally tortures him at length, but it's fine and it's exactly what everyone needed. ...No?!?