Elitist Book Reviews

Morg is not dead. Rafe is in trouble. Asher is sick. Danthe has given up. Lur is dying. By the end of THE PRODIGAL MAGE everything has gone wrong and it looks pretty bleak.

The only one left to save them is mousy Dennie, the young woman too timid to do anything. Or is she? She's spent the last months caring for her comatose father and taking over the household responsibilities of her deteriorating mother--and she's the only one who believes that Rafe is still alive, and that he needs help only she can provide. Dennie is not the girl she used to be before her world changed, and she's beginning to realize her new role in it.

At the same time, across the blight in Old Dorana, Rafe and Arlin have discovered that Morg, while not to his full powers, isn't dead either, and is gathering his strength to begin anew his campaign of horrors.

PRODIGAL was the set-up novel, where we got to know the characters, the setting, the back story, and the dilemma. It was fairly predictable, with a cliffhanger ending, the plot not much more than building up a nebulous impending doom.

Fortunately, THE RELUCTANT MAGE doesn't have the problems of its predecessor. It's faster-paced, the characters more interesting and engaging, and Karen Miller takes full advantage of PRODIGAL's set-up to move the story forward toward a rewarding conclusion. If you spent the time to read the first book, it's definitely worth it to finish the second in the Fisherman's Children duology.

In RELUCTANT we get into the heads of three different main characters, departing from those in PRODIGAL. There's the mousy Dennie, who finds the courage necessary to do the hard thing. We spend some time in arrogant Arlin's head--Rafe's boyhood nemesis--who is all mixed up with conflicting wants, yet is ultimately a good guy. We finally really get to see the world beyond Lur, where we meet Prince Ewan who is determined to do what he can to protect his own people from the horrible life they lived before Asher 'killed' Morg twenty years ago. And it will take Rafe, Arlin, and Dennie--the three strongest mages alive--working together to even have a small chance at saving everyone from bondage. It's a story in black and white: the heroes are likable and the bad guy is truly disgustingly evil.

While the setting is your standard fantasy world and the magic nothing beyond the usual, Miller still manages to give it flavor and interest. The prose flows smoothly, the PoV switching effortlessly between characters. Miller mixes in humor to keep the bleakness from becoming over-wrought; plus the romance between two main characters helps lighten the tone of the story, even if you can see their impending coupledom coming from a hundred pages away. The character arcs are well-developed and satisfying, if sometimes heavy-handed. The dialogue is quick-witted, and while most of it involves arguing, at least it's not at the annoying level of PRODIGAL's constant bickering.

Yet, for all its strengths, RELUCTANT feels more geared toward female audiences because of the way the story is told, the romantic elements, and the focus on relationships among the main characters, which is too bad because it wouldn't have taken much tweaking to make it appeal to a wider audience. And while it is faster paced, it still could have moved quicker--in fact the duology would have been better as a tighter written standalone novel. Other problems? Miller's sense of distance and time aren't always clear or consistent; foreshadowing lacks subtlety, which makes it predictable; and the main characters keep secrets from each other without obvious motivations, the explanations coming too late and petty.

If you read and liked the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology then you'll like PRODIGAL and RELUCTANT because Miller is anything if consistent with her writing. If you haven't read any Miller, and if you like the standard fantasy fare--heavier on the romance/relationship/character development--with lively prose, I'd recommended starting with THE INNOCENT MAGE.

Recommended Age: 14+ for violence.
Language: A few instances, but otherwise mild.
Violence: It's more graphic and intense than PRODIGAL; but compared to other violent fantasy novels, it's more in the moderate to low range.
Sex: None.

Ten years ago Asher saved Lur from destruction. Now he and his wife Danthe, and their two children Rafe and Dennie, look forward to a more peaceful life, free of prophecy and fear.

No such luck. Of course.

The earth itself has become sick with turmoil--flooding, earthquakes, whirlpools--as a result of hundreds of years of magical manipulations. Asher worries he must use his WeatherWorking magic again to save the land, even at the expense of his own life. At the same time the most powerful mages of Lur turn their noses at Asher's help, and instead seek their own way to escape a land in danger of famine. Unfortunately, Lur is surrounded by an impassible reef on the coastline and an even more dangerous blight across the mountains.

THE PRODIGAL MAGE catches up with Asher and Danthe from the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology (THE INNOCENT MAGE and THE AWAKENED MAGE) which are set 10-20 years before PRODIGAL. While it's not necessary to read those two books in order to understand what's going on, it will prevent a high learning curve about the world, the story, and the characters.

The main character of PRODIGAL is Rafe, Asher's son, who has inherited his father's unique mixed magic--that is, he has the magic of his own Olkin race which is subtle and nature-focused, and the Doranen magic which is not only much stronger, but dangerous. Asher, however, is afraid of magic and what it can do. He's seen enough destruction and death caused by magic to last his lifetime, and as a result doesn't want to have anything to do with it. But when his son is born with his own gift, he and Danthe block Rafe's abilities so no one knows what he can do. Or how strong he really is in Doranen magic.

Rafe loves his parents, but he hates that his parents keep secrets from him. He hates that they stifle his magic. He doesn't understand his parents, and they don't understand him. It's a frustrating dynamic how he can still love and want to honor his parents, but they can at the same time be blinded to their son's needs as a result of their own fears. Then there's Dennie, Rafe's little sister, whose own powers take a truly unique form, but requires even more over-protection by their parents. Asher is still the common sense fisherman's son, who's bullheaded and yet soft-hearted. Danthe is still the fiery woman trying to make the right decisions. All of this is established pretty early on.

But like in the first duology, it all turns into blah blah blah.

I had hoped that Karen Miller learned from the mistakes in her first series. The beginning chapters of PRODIGAL were setting up to be a more streamlined and exciting promise, but by a quarter of the way through repetition and over-wrought emotion become a crutch for building tension. In INNOCENT and AWAKENED the repetition consisted of constant yammering about a prophesy that didn't have much bearing on the plot. In PRODIGAL we read the same arguments between the characters in practically every chapter, and all the yelling and tears get old fast. I liked Asher in the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker duology, but here he's a bitter old man, and Danthe has become shrill and overbearing. Rafe wanders around aimless and grouchy. It just wasn't as fun to read. The conversations re-hash the same things over and over. The internal monologues are characters with one-track minds. Blah de blah de blah. Just get on with the story, already.

Not a lot happens in PRODIGAL, and like INNOCENT is fairly predictable, the book a big set-up for the sequel. Mostly this is because Rafe needs to grow up. He first has to come into his powers, otherwise he's pretty useless, since he's got no profession and his father won't teach him magic beyond what he learns in school. The problems with Lur's climate and landscape spend the entire book to reach a breaking point before anything gets going. And while it's not uninteresting, it means that the tension has to do with a nebulous danger instead of the result of active plot, which hurts the story's momentum. Then the novel ends with a cliffhanger. Again. Just like in INNOCENT. Would it kill the author to write the first book in a series in a different way?

What PRODIGAL and others of Miller's books have going for them is the prose. Each PoV chapter, whether it be from Rafe's PoV or his Doranen schoolboy nemesis Arlin, is flavored with their own ways of speaking and seeing the world. Add to this smooth flow and pacing and it's easy to keep reading, hoping that perhaps the next chapter will move the story along.

But is it worth all this boring set-up for what comes next? Find out tomorrow when I review the sequel to THE PRODIGAL MAGE: THE RELUCTANT MAGE.

Recommended Age: 14+
Language: Not a lot, and what there is isn't very strong.
Violence: An exciting scene where people are in danger or die, but nothing graphic or very violent.
Sex: None.