Friday Memes: Bastion by Mercedes Lackey

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

I decided to end the year (I'm reading late in December but posting later on) by trying to finish up some series books that have been on my TBR mountain for a while. I chose Bastion by Mercedes Lackey which is the fifth book in the Valdemar: Collegium Chronicles. Here is the description of this book that has been on the stack since October 1, 2013:

Mags returns to the Collegium, but there are mixed feelings--his included--about him actually remaining there. No one doubts that he is and should be a Herald, but he is afraid that his mere presence is going to incite more danger right in the heart of Valdemar. The heads of the Collegia are afraid that coming back to his known haunt is going to give him less protection than if he went into hiding. Everyone decides that going elsewhere is the solution for now. So since he is going elsewhere--why not return to the place he was found in the first place and look for clues? And those who are closest to him, and might provide secondary targets, are going along. With Herald Jadrek, Herald Kylan (the Weaponsmaster's chosen successor), and his friends Bear, Lena, and Amily, they head for the Bastion, the hidden spot in the hills that had once been the headquarters of a powerful band of raiders that had held him and his parents prisoner. But what they find is not what anyone expected.

Beginning:

There it was, a city on a low, gentle hill, walls shining in the sunlight, houses clustered up against the outer and inner walls like chicks snuggling up to a gray hen.

Friday 56:

"There ain't a word for that," he said, when Seneson asked him for what seemed extremely odd to him, the word for games.

"Are you saying they don't have a word they use for that concept, or that they doen't have a word in their own language?" Seneson asked, looking up from his notes.