Winds of Fate

"Mercedes Lackey is one of my all time favorite authors. She was one of my first real introductions to the "High Fantasy" genres at a very young and impressionable age, and is at least 33% responsible for how open-minded I ended up being as an adult. 😆 Starting at the young age of 11ish, The Winds books - and its follow up series, The Storm series and the Owl Mage series - are one of those series that I keep going back to over and over again, even now as a cybical 40 something. The characters are a little Mary Sue at times, and not gonna lie, they start out as kind of whiny little $hits, but the way they grow into their own is worth it, and the adventures they find themselves in make for a very fun, low-stress read. The villians are also very boringly evil and super sadistic, so fyi for All The Trigger Warnings, even if none ever happen "on screen" so to speak. Full disclosure, the traumas are also treated a lot more casually than anyone who has experienced them might feel comfortable with, and I can only offer the fact that in *this* particular universe, healing mind magics are a very real thing - which may have assisted a bit in finding closure among those that had to go through them."

"I love any books she writes about the Valdemar"

"This is the first book I read from Mercedes Lackey and it made me a fan for life of Valdemar and her other series."

"This one is actually set after the Queen's Own trilogy and is based on one of the characters from that set. :)"