 |
| Image: Book cover. A man with flowing black hair and wizard robes holds a ball of light in one hand and a book in the other. He is standing on a dais. A stone, hawk like creature is perched above his head. |
Nicodemus is a wizard-in-training, dreaming of the day he
can wear the robes of a full mage. In
this world, magic is literally made of text—letters, words, paragraphs—that form
what you need them to be. But Nicodemus
may never get the wizard robes he so covets because every spell he touches
becomes corrupted. Oh, and he fits the
prophesy of someone who could save the whole of magic… or destroy it and
everything else.
Nicodemus is a good protagonist with complex
emotions. He wants so badly to become a
true wizard and often hates his disability, even to the point of wanting a cure
(which he doesn’t find in this book) but not to the point dooming other
people. He is loyal and courageous,
hopeful and frustrated. Some readers
will find his moments of self-pity irritating.
Nicodemus is around twenty-five.
The secondary characters are interesting. Nicodemus’ mentor is Master Shannon, a blind
(sort of) teacher who was exiled for political leanings from his old city. Nicodemus meets druids (one has a limp) who
have their own agenda given by a goddess.
A former student of Shannon’s is the head of security for visiting
diplomats. The villain is unabashedly
evil.
The other disabled spellwrights, only two of which the
book goes into any detail with, were realistic but not satisfying to me. Dev, who appears to have ADD, only gets a few
snippets of scenes throughout the entire book.
And John, who gets a fair bit more time… well… let’s just say it isn’t
what it looks like.
I wish the author would have went into more detail with
the other disabled wizards-in-training.
The setting is cool.
The university, where a good portion of the story takes place, is
described well. The secondary locales
are detailed, too. Even though this
takes place at a magic school, Nicodemus is more like a teacher’s assistant (he
sometimes teaches basic classes to younger students).
The magic system is unique and the history pretty robust,
even drawing on Christian mythology for part of it. But, because there is a lot to explain and
describe, the book gets bogged down in details, which considerably slows the
pacing in spots. There are long dialogue
sections trying to educate the reader on how something works or what happened
in the past. Though there is plenty of
action, as well.
Some elements of the story aren’t revealed until
later. For instance, the book mentions
the prophesy near the beginning, but the reader won’t know what the prophesy
STATES until page eighty. A race of
beings said to have been in Nicodemus’ city in the past aren’t even described
or explained until hundreds of pages into the story.
The story does use the word “retarded” more than
once. Nicodemus calls himself that, or
gets called that, on a few occasions and another disabled spellwright, whom
they call “Simple John” is also referred to as such. I’m sure I found a few
more ableist slurs in there, but I wince every time I see that word.
Since the book is about disabled characters, and the
author himself has dyslexia, it’s up to each reader to determine whether or not
that’s a deal breaker for reading this book.
*************
Other Notes:
This book has no sex, though mentions Nicodemus had a
girlfriend in the past.
There is swearing, though most of it is creative.
There is violence and people do get murdered, but it is
mostly fantasy violence.
There is zero rape.
This is book one of a trilogy, but there isn’t a
cliffhanger.
I definitely recommend this book.
Find him on the web: http://www.blakecharlton.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment