My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Strong language (lots of f bombs), prostitution, child sex slaves
'Seven powerful mages want to make the world a better place. We're going to kill them first.'
Picture
a wizard. Go ahead, close your eyes. There he is, see? Skinny old guy
with a long straggly beard. No doubt he's wearing iridescent silk robes
that couldn't protect his frail body from a light breeze. The hat's a
must, too, right? Big, floppy thing, covered in esoteric symbols that
would instantly show every other mage where this one gets his magic?
Wouldn't want a simple steel helmet or something that might, you know,
protect the part of him most needed for conjuring magical forces from
being bashed in with a mace (or pretty much any household object).
Now
open your eyes and let me show you what a real war mage looks like . .
. but be you're probably not going to like it, because we're violent,
angry, dangerously broken people who sell our skills to the highest
bidder and be damned to any moral or ethical considerations.
At least, until such irritating concepts as friendship and the end of the world get in the way.
My
name is Cade Ombra, and though I currently make my living as a
mercenary wonderist, I used to have a far more noble-sounding job title -
until I discovered the people I worked for weren't quite as noble as
I'd believed. Now I'm on the run and my only friend, a homicidal thunder
mage, has invited me to join him on a suicide mission against the seven
deadliest mages on the continent.
Time to recruit some very bad people to help us on this job . . .
I was looking forward to reading this book. It seemed like something I would like. There were glowing reviews for it. Just about everyone I know on Goodreads enjoyed it. I thought it would be a fun read about some unconventional wizards. Right off the bat we are told they are the bad guys, and I was ok if they were a bit morally gray, and our main characters were. But what I got was darker than I expected, and the world was a lot more grim than I wanted. It seemed the whole world was loaded with bad guys and no one was really good. Not even the angels. Also, the angels and demons thing was just not what I was expecting or wanting either. To top it off, there wasn't nearly as much humor as I thought there would be and the practice of having child sex slaves was sickening, even though the main characters don't participate in it. I think we were pretty much all in agreement at book club about this being a disappointment.
Overall, I just think that this type of fantasy is not for me. I ended up not even finishing it. I got 71% in, put it down for a while, and realized I really didn't care if I even to picked it up again. I ended up finding out the rest of the story through my book club friends, and it doesn't sound like I missed anything good. I have no regrets about abandoning this.
If you enjoy fantasy that leans grimdark and is told in a modern voice you might like this one. If not then I wouldn't recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment