Rise of Mages

When I am reviewing a book, it is almost always after the fact. I don’t sit down to review a book, and I don’t review every book I read. I just read and sometimes write a review. Somehow this time I knew when I picked this one up, within the first 50 pages, that I was going to be reviewing it. Maybe because I sat down with my editor’s hat on too soon after other writing-related work, but I could see the forest through the trees on Rise of Mages, and well... I just don’t care.

Pick up Rise of Mages Here

What do I mean?

I could see the problems. The tropes are strong with this one, but it’s done well enough that I excused most of them. The worldbuilding was light for my taste. I wanted this book to be another 50 pages longer. I loved the magic system. This idea of a suffusing aether that can be infused into items but which mages can simply tap into, like ley lines of old works for me. Similarly, I wanted more on the world. Another 50 pages of worldbuilding on the side of deep history and politics wouldn’t have been lost on me. I thought all that by page 100, and I thought it because around page 100, our proverbial hero-in-training had a, well... training session, and my brain told me, “He’s too powerful, and too good at this.” I wanted a slower burn.

But by the measure of any book I am reading, when I was at page 115 that night and going to bed, I asked myself, “Do I want to pick up the book tomorrow and finish it?” and wouldn’t you know it, I definitely did. I wanted to know. And that is a high compliment for any book. This was despite some weaknesses.

Darmon was an evident bad guy from the beginning, but not actually as hateable as I wanted him to be. Despite the logical action being that he should die, the character lives to villain another day because our author needed him there as a foil. I felt the hand of fate. Our protagonist, Emrael, the son of a line of deposed kings, starts the book as a gifted swordsman, lauded in his time, but does sometimes lose fights when the author needs him to.

Once, Emrael even says in his head, “Was everyone around him a mage?” A thought I was having almost concurrently as we learn all the friends and family around him have secret powers too. But still, I wanted to keep reading. Why?

I can’t shake the feeling that this is a throwback book, in a good way: A book that reminded me of Terry Brooks, or a young David Gemmell, especially in the last third when magic really starts flying and combat opens up wide.

I know I spent much of this review pointing out the questionable bits, perhaps hoping in some strange world the author sees them. New authors get better as time goes by, almost always. And it was a good book, despite these critiques. I would still recommend it, and I am still putting book two, The Fate of Silent Gods, on my reading list. It was nice to have a straight-up hero story, and a journey that felt at once familiar but well done.

I hope for more worldbuilding in book two. I hope for more meat, but this was a worthy start.

For all its peccadilloes, 4/5.