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62 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
If it's not original, cut to the chase!, December 17, 2007
This review is from: The Innocent Mage (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
The youngest son in a family of hard-working fishermen, twenty-year-old Asher steals away from his coastal home to find his fortune in the kingdom's capitol. He intends to return after one year, coin-purse bulging, to give his father an easier life; but once in the city, he unknowingly finds himself hitched to the puppet-strings of a Great Prophecy. For, as envisioned by a secret circle of prophecy-keepers, Asher may be the kingdom's only hope against a long-dormant Dark Lord who is awakening in the North, behind the magical wall that has protected the land for centuries ...
And so on and so forth. If only the story of The Innocent Mage (Book One of the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology), as told by first-time novelist Karen Miller, were as subtle and intriguing as the book's cover. Ms. Miller is a competent writer, word for word, and she shows a particular sensitivity to the flow of dialogue, especially argument, between friends. However, the 640 pages of the novel are nothing more than a prologue for the conflict to come. (At least one assumes it will come, and Asher will, despite much self-doubting and protesting, become The Awakened Mage and save the world.) Ms. Miller shifts easily from one character's viewpoint to another and shows range in moving from Asher's rough, salty perspective to the more refined ones of royalty. (That said, the villain's viewpoint is so stereotypically oily that one expects him to invent railroad tracks and grow mustaches, the better to place damsels in distress and have something to twirl while laughing sinisterly.) But overall, the pacing is simply too ... bloody ... slow--which is one of the problems of draping a protagonist with the heavy mantle of Great Prophecy: unless the story is told with extreme care, it loses dramatic tension, as the reader knows what will essentially happen next and is only left with discovering how it will happen. (Ms. Miller or her editor may have recognized this and attempted to manufacture tension by inserting chapter breaks in the middle of long scenes.)
I was able to finish this novel, and at times, I was taken in by the characters' relationships and Ms. Miller's undemanding style; but I cannot recall reading a fantasy novel and being so annoyed at the lack of progress. Suffice it to say that both cover and title are misleading, as Asher doesn't even experiment with the tiniest spell. ("The Innocent Fisherman Comes to Town" would have been more appropriate.) I refuse to read the sequel unless someone I trust assures me of its payoff. Recommended only for fans of epic fantasies wherein orphan boys make good and save the world. Two slow-drying starfish.
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62 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Start the story already, November 29, 2007
This review is from: The Innocent Mage (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
If you can tolerate 400 pages of inaction and conversation, you might like The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller. On the other hand, if you are like me and expect action and conflict in a novel, you would be wise to skip over it on the bookshelf. Seriously, nothing significant, suspenseful, or exciting happens until page 400.
So what does happen in the first 400 pages? We meet the protagonists, Asher and Gar, and they bicker like a same sex couple. They talk, talk, and talk. I suppose that Miller strives for character development in these pages, but the characters never develop beyond their introductions: Asher starts as a blunt, stubborn, good-natured country boy, and that is how he remains throughout the novel. He is the titular character yet does nothing to demonstrate it. Doesn't that make the title superficial?
I am surprised that this novel was even published. In my opinion, it adds nothing to the genre and resembles a patchwork of fantasy clichés. There is a Wall that protects the world from nameless, faceless evil, and there is a Prophecy that foretells the collapse of the Wall. Magic exists, but only in the hands of the Doranen, but since we encounter no Doranen besides royalty, we never learn what they do with their magic, besides controlling the weather. Using Weather magic somehow maintains the Wall, although the connection is never explained. It would make sense if the Weatherworker was draining the good weather from the realms beyond the wall, leaving that land eternally dark, stormy, and harsh, but that does not seem to be the case. There is a predictable romance, and a predictable friendship, and a predictable villain, once Miller decides to include one. What's missing: How about subtlety and originality?
Some of Miller's choices befuddle me. Asher's folksy dialect and country bumpkin act irritated me after a few hundred pages. Miller also switches viewpoints to supporting characters such as Fane, Willer, and Darran, but to no real purpose, since it never happens consistently enough to matter. Miller also inserts chapter breaks in the middle of dialogue, which seems strange. I do not understand why the king is also the Weather mage; you would think that the demands of one job would make performing the other job impossible. Some events also occur off page in the interludes between chapters, such as Asher's realization of love. Miller should show Asher falling in love, not tell us.
To be fair, the novel has a few bright spots. The Prophecy seems to be a force capable of acting, and not just words scrawled on a dusty scroll; I wish that Miller had explored this idea further. The symmetry between Asher and Gar--how they both try to satisfy their fathers while battling their siblings--is interesting, although we should have seen more interaction between Asher and his family for this dynamic to be effective. Miller does a good job of staying in character, and I like how she uses fishing and ocean expressions and metaphors when writing in Asher's perspective.
Miller is a decent writer who could use a better editor. Someone should have told her to get to the story already. Stories need action and conflict; they do not need pages and pages of setup and dialogue.
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34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent characters, Shaky plot, October 1, 2007
This review is from: The Innocent Mage (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, Book 1) (Mass Market Paperback)
Like another reviewer, I was attracted to this book because of the cover - a really vibrant, eye-catching piece of work. I didn't expect too much out of the story itself; at most, maybe a day or three of mild entertainment. I'm glad to say that I was wrong.
Most of the characters of _The Innocent Mage_ are very well-developed and complement each other nicely. Especially great was the relationship and interaction between Asher and Prince Gar - Miller really got across in a plausible and enjoyable way how a bond of friendship might form between two vastly different men from totally different ends of the social spectrum.
I found the chapters told from Asher's point of view very amusing and especially entertaining. His dialect, no-nonsense attitude, and sarcastic humor were a joy to read.
However. The plot was a bit... shallow. I scarcely noticed while I was reading since the characterizations were so amazing, but after I got done reading I sat back and thought, "Y'know, there wasn't really too much that happened, except in the last 80 or so pages..." It would have been nice to see some more back-story on exactly how and why the Doranen came to be in Lur, apart from "Oh, there was a civil war and we had to run and found this shiny new kingdom here."
The main villain of the story, Morg, is another disappointment, at least in this first book. He's a caricature of the stock Dark Lord, complete with Dark Dominion, Other-Worldly Slaves and Assorted Monsters, and Unending Hatred of the Good Guys. I will say that he was a sneaky evil, rather than an over-the-top evil, which was a nice change.
If the characters hadn't been so strong, this would have been a three-star or possibly only a two-star book. But Asher and his friends and enemies were great, the plot as set up in the last few chapters looks set to take off like a rocket in the second and final book, and Miller's style of writing is just so accessible that I've got to give this four stars.
Best of all, it seems book two is being released next month, so I don't have to wait years to finish the story.
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