Arrows of the Queen wasn't a problem because it was the first series (and it's not as though YA literature isn't full of abused nobodies who make good, because ninety percent of the population at age thirteen really does want to hear that they'll save the world and everyone else will either be impressed or eaten by monsters). Then I read The Last Herald-Mage and realized it was a trope. And then I read either The Mage Winds or The Mage Storms or both and I realized it was an obsession. I didn't get through The Mage Wars. I believe that I read Vows and Honor, but have almost no memory of the stories. I remain fond of Alberich ("Stolen Silver"). That's a lot more Mercedes Lackey than I thought I'd read. Damn.

. . . I did imprint headlong on Anne McCaffrey. In ninth grade, I made a stuffed-animal fire lizard for a class project. Dragons were so much cooler than horses.