The Tethered Mage by Melissa CarusoMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
[Disclaimer: I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley for review purposes.]
I'll be a little generous with my stars, since the end of this book was much better than the beginning. I would rate it 3.5 if I had the choice, but 4 is not a stretch. It's not one of my favorites, but once the story got going, it was a pretty good ride.
Amalia is the heir to her mother's seat on the Council of Nine, which essentially "rules" Raverra, their city (I think it was just a city within the Empire, to be honest I didn't quite get all the relationships here). She would rather bury her nose in books (normally my kind of girl) than be a political leader, but here she is. One morning she's out picking up a rare book from one of her connections, when she sees a girl about her age in trouble with a bunch of men. These men are obviously trying to kidnap the girl, claiming she's an indentured servant and still has time left on her contract. Amalia steps in, but the girl says she's got this, and sets the men on fire. Then she sets the area around her on fire. She is completely out of control, the fire is spreading, and Amalia has no idea what to do when suddenly, a man shows up and tells her "Hey, put this bracelet on the girl's wrist and it'll all be cool." So she does, and the fire goes out, the girl passes out, and Amalia is suddenly bound to this girl for life. The girl, Zaira, is now Amalia's Falcon, and Amalia is Zaira's Falconer. The Falconer is charged with keeping the Falcon's magical powers under wraps so that she can't use them, with a set of release and binding words. Admittedly, I was pretty grossed out by the whole thing. It's essentially conscription into an army as soon as the "mage mark" shows up, which is usually in early childhood. The Falcon becomes a soldier, bound to the Falconer, and only allowed to leave their special home (which is an island, by the way) when the Falconer lets them, and only when accompanied by them. It feels like slavery. And Zaira is none too happy about being forced into Falconhood when she wakes up.
Amalia is a pretty wet noodle of a character for a good chunk of the book. It's once we hit the middle point in the book that we see more of a character progression. In the beginning she acts like a teenager with a semi-regal attitude. By the end, she's definitely more regal and interesting. But boy was getting there difficult.
To be honest, I wish this had been told from Zaira's point of view. The political manipulation we get when we hear Amalia's first-person narrative can be pretty boring, and sometimes interesting, but I think Zaira is probably the smarter of the two (at least she has more common sense), and would have made for a more compelling story. As it is, she's practically reduced to a background character. Amalia can go wherever the heck she pleases, while Zaira is at her mercy.
The author did a good job of showing how terrible the whole situation is, especially for Zaira, who never wanted to be caught in the first place. There is a lot of resistance, and even at the end it's not 100% certain as to where Zaira's loyalty lies. The tentative friendship (if you can call it that) at the end of the book is very shaky and seems like it could break at any time. And I'm sure that's where the author was going with it. I just wish I'd had Zaira's side of it all without the cloud of Amalia's judgment.
There is also some instalove, which I called from the first time we meet Lieutenant Verdi (no spoilers here, Amalia's blushing within five minutes of meeting him). I don't quite understand what made him fall for her (or even her fall for him, he's pretty bad at protecting anyone, if you ask me. Frankly, he's a pretty wet noodle himself). He's sweet, and I assume handsome, and of course Amalia is beautiful, and so is Zaira, and so is pretty much every other good character in the book. But I really just wasn't feeling the romance here.
This review is turning out more negative than I expected. OK, let's get to the good!
Like I said up there, I really enjoyed the character progression we saw from Amalia. She grows a spine, grows a personality, and grows into her role in the political battlefield. She learns how to be more covert, she puts her regal-ness to use, and she gets the job done more effectively than I would have expected.
Zaira is also a plus, although she acts pretty much the way I would have anticipated she would. There's really no point in forcing a fire warlock to the battle front if you know she isn't willing to burn shit down. But admittedly, I enjoyed her slight warming to Amalia, even though it's clear Zaira carries all the sense in the relationship.
Once I got to the halfway point, the story started picking up. The twists and turns that the plot took were mostly foreshadowed enough that I could figure out what was going to happen. The only one that surprised me was (view spoiler). The rest I sort of saw coming. That didn't mean they weren't good, because it really was a very convoluted plot, and I wasn't quite sure where the author was going to take it.
Prince Ruven felt like a tropey evil witchlord, full of all the venom, malice, and plain sociopathy you'd expect from a villain. I know that in book 2, Raverra is trying to deal with a threat from Ruven's country, but I couldn't quite figure out how he was connected with the plot that was the main thread. Maybe he wasn't actually connected in the true sense of what was going on, but only in the fact that his presence could help sew discord, which would in turn help fuel the war he wants with Raverra/the Empire. I don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out.
Overall this was a good read. It took a while to get going for me. I wasn't thrilled with Amalia as a main character, but I admit that she did go through a great transformation by the end. I think there was some pretty strong writing, although getting a sense of place and time was a little difficult. I enjoyed it as a fantasy, but wish there had been a little more explanation of the magic system and how it worked. A little bit of extra worldbuilding would not have been amiss either, although at almost 500 pages, it was already running a little heavy. I really love long books and love that this wasn't split into two (YA fantasy has really ruined the art of the long novel, TBH) just to cater to short attention spans. And I'm glad that I didn't cave in to my short attention span and abandon the read. Pick it up, check it out, and see if it's for you.
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