Darkmage

This was a challenging one to review. There are some very good aspects to the book, but also some very fundamental flaws and things that did not gel with me.

Darkmage falls very firmly into the grimdark category. We are thrown into a massive conflict, almost from the get go with very little world building or character development at the start. Unfortunately I think this lack of scene setting put me on the back foot from the start. We are very briefly introduced to a mage culture and hierarchy, but within a few pages that order is almost completely destroyed without us really being allowed to build a connection with it, or understand the motives for the betrayal that leads to this destruction or the motivation for the very strict and limiting structure imposed. Apparently there is some centuries old conflict with someone only ever described as ‘the enemy'. This lack of definition, whilst adding to the greyness of the world, tends to even further lose the focus from the why.

That being said, I can kind of get what the author is trying to achieve here - the destruction of everything grounding the MCs world gives motive and agency to what he is forced to do, with increasingly morally grey decisions and choices that challenge their beliefs. The motivations of the MC which might be questionable on their own become entirely more believable within the context framed. At the same time, the strength of belief within the character and their own moral code is stated several times, but we don't ever really see it in action as the cataclysm that forces him to go against it happens so early in the book - again the lack of buildup here causes problems. With just a bit more character building I would have felt the strain of him having to against his oaths in a far more personal way. The choices and decisions are delicious in their difficulty based on what is stated, but I would have liked a bit more showing of why these oaths are important.

Ultimately, I think the book starts to far into the story. There really needed to be some more world and character set up as the terrible moral choices the characters have to face lose their impact from the lack of context. In the end I struggled to engage with the characters and world because of this.