Spellmonger: Book 1 Of The Spellmonger Series
Ratings23
Average rating3.3
15
Ratings23
Average rating3.3
Minalan gave up a promising career as a professional warmage to live the quiet life of a village spellmonger in the remote mountain valley of Boval. It was a peaceful, beautiful little fief, far from the dangerous feudal petty squabbles of the Five Duchies, on the world of Callidore. There were cows. Lots of cows. And cheese. For six months things went well: he found a quaint little shop, befriended the local lord, the village folk loved him, he found a sharp young apprentice to help out, and best yet, he met a comely young widow with the prettiest eyes . . . Then one night Minalan is forced to pick up his mageblade again to defend his adopted home from the vanguard of an army of goblins - gurvani, they call themselves - bent on a genocidal crusade against all mankind. And that was the good news. The bad news was that their shamans were armed with more magical power than has been seen since the days of the ancient Imperial Magocracy - and their leader, a mysterious, vengeful force of hate and dark magic, is headed directly to Boval Vale, along with a massive invading army of gurvani. The good people of Boval and their spellmonger have only one choice: to hole up in the over-sized Boval Castle and hope they can endure a siege against hundreds of thousands of goblins. When the people look to him for hope, Minalan does his best, but the odds are depressing: there are multitudes of goblins, and they want Boval Vale as a staging ground for a vengeful invasion of the whole Five Duchies. Add to his troubles a jealous rival mage, a motley band of mercenaries, a delusional liege lord who insists victory is at hand despite the hordes at his door, a dour castellan, a moody, pregnant girlfriend and a catty ex-girlfriend who specializes in sex magic - all trapped in a stinking, besieged castle with no hope of rescue, and you'll understand why Minalan is willing to take his chances with the goblins. All that stands between the gurvani horde and the people of the Five Duchies is one tired, overwhelmed baker's son who wanted nothing more than to be a simple village spellmonger!
Reviews with the most likes.
One hour of fight scenes. I couldn't stand this in The Iliad, I will most certainly not endure this here.
Read 1:01 / 18:22 6%
I love the concept of the story. However, the implementation seemed a bit off. I enjoyed the read, and will continue the series, but it seemed long-winded at times. As a quick non-spoiler example, at one point the author spent a good portion of writing covering the names, details, and short backstory of a group of mage's he was involved with. I would be okay with this normally, however, I don't recall any of those mage's having more than a mention through the remainder of the book. It just seemed like unnecessary character development. This type of divergence from the overall story, or activities happening at the time, happened a few times.
Given the above, gave it a 3, but would easily be a 3.5 if I could give it that :)
The narrator of the audiobook was good, but didn't fit the young, brash protagonist, he also had an unfortunately strong love of the Shatner pause.
The story was overall interesting, but the first chapter was the best and the rest was almost entirely tell instead of show with a lot of summaries of things that happened. There was a whole heck of a lot of info dumps of world building, very little of it relevant. I like world building as much as the next person, but it has to be interesting for me to be, well, interested.
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