Friday Memes: Closer to Home 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.

This week I pulled Closer to Home by Mercedes Lackey off TBR mountain. I enjoy Lackey's Valdemar books and recently finished the first five books about Mags. I want to know what happens next for him. Here is the description from Amazon:

Mags was once an enslaved orphan living a harsh life in the mines, until the King's Own Herald discovered his talent and trained him as a spy. Now a Herald in his own right, at the newly established Heralds' Collegium, Mags has found a supportive family, including his Companion Dallen.

Although normally a Herald in his first year of Whites would be sent off on circuit, Mags is needed close to home for his abilities as a spy and his powerful Mindspeech gift. There is a secret, treacherous plot within the royal court to destroy the Heralds. The situation becomes dire after the life of Mags' mentor, King's Own Nikolas, is imperiled. His daughter Amily is chosen as the new King's Own, a complicated and dangerous job that is made more so by this perilous time. Can Mags and Amily save the court, the Heralds, and the Collegium itself?

Beginning:

The crow skimming the treetops with its mate cast an avid eye down to the ground below, looking for one last opportunity for a meal before taking to the branches for the night.

Friday 56:

Mags tilted Nikolas to one side, with his head on the downward side of the slope of the bank, so that all the water ran out of his lungs.