I recently read a woven tapestry of a tale that left me in awe. It was the same kind of awe I felt when I nearly cried over Bridge to Terabithia as a 9 year old, and the twinkle in my eye when I finished Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials as a 16 year old and when I finished the Harry Potter series last year. The trilogy (books titled Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise, and Magic's Price) was called The Last Herald Mage, by Mercedes Lackey.

The trilogy revolves around a guy (Vanyel Ashkevron) who matures from a vain pretty-boy with no special talents, through to a young adult dealing with the loss of his "life-bonded" (read: a magical version of soul-mate) ("Tylendel"), concluding with him as a near 40-year-old man who has just discovered that his current young love ("Stefen") is the reincarnation of his life-bonded - just as he is about to literally sacrifice himself for the greater good. The sacrifice is in an epic magical encounter that was foreshadowed with his "ForeSight" visions which occurred before his main menagerie of powers are ever even "blasted open" in the first book.

The trilogy mainly deals with concepts of sacrificing oneself for the greater good, and trudging along despite the pain of nearly 20 years without the person the protagonist literally knew was his soul-mate. The fantasy setting honestly takes a second seat to the immersive journey through Vanyel's emotions and maturation.

Oh, and by the way, this protagonist was homosexual. Mercedes Lackey did an excellent job portraying a homosexual protagonist. By abandoning conventional vocabulary using words that were even foreign-tongued to most of the main characters, she did a good dance around sounding like one more hippy trying to place homosexuals in a good light. Words like "shay'a'chern" equating to homosexual (and eventually abbreviated into a slang "shaych") – and even the use of the word "fey" (in conventional fantasy settings used to describe fairy creatures and elves) as a convenient synonym for effeminate that happens to rhyme with "gay" – but the words "gay", "fag", "faggot", "queer", and "homosexual" were never mentioned anywhere, much less even more lude colloquialisms from modern society. She didn't even describe the sex – as one might think such a race-y premise would entail.

The best part is – her main animus for writing this particular trilogy wasn't to put homosexuality in a good light. She had already written a couple trilogies set in this universe, well after Vanyel's time – and Vanyel, being the Last Herald-Mage, was referred to on the outskirts of those other stories. His sexuality had only been an issue because references to him were accompanied by references to his lost-but-rediscovered life-bonded – so when the publisher wanted more "magic" and less psychic powers (Heralds, not Herald-Mages, inhabit the lands after Vanyel's passing), she had to write about Vanyel.

At this point in time, Mercedes Lackey has published nearly 30 books in this universe. Some with secondary characters that are shay'a'chern - but from what the reviews I've read, nothing as rapturing as Vanyel Ashkevron as The Last Herald Mage. It seems one gay protagonist was her limit, despite her talents.

Even more to the pity, after reading this trilogy, left in shock of the tragedy of Vanyel's life, I was hoping I could find some more uplifting fantasy fiction with a gay protagonist. I found this list of alternate sexualities in science-fiction/fantasy, but nothing catches my eye the way Mercedes Lackey, Vanyel Ashkevron, and Tylendel/Stefen captured my heart.

Thanks go out to my friend Ben, for recommending the trilogy. He harped on it for quite a while, and I not reading it because the premise sounded kinda cliché, – but I finally broke down and read them, and they are anything but.

…which here at MOSA is good news. Included in this toolset is a full API, mostly managed, for reading/writing CIL
PE files, along with reading/writing Managed PDB files.

The news comes from ZDNet, but you can see it for yourself at CodePlex.

At MOSA we are still trying to analyze the feature set. The PDB reading functionality is fully managed and supposedly applies to multiple PDB format variants. The PDB writing functionality calls out to unmanaged code and is most likely not useful.

However, the BSD-compatible MS-PL this is licensed under means we can cannibalize the reading functionality and use it to learn the format well enough to be able to write PDB-writing functionality as well, for both the managed and unmanaged PDB variants.