Stars: 2.75 out of 5
There is a great premise there. The world is original and very interesting, and the rules of magic, of Flow, are fascinating. Unfortunately, none of it was fleshed out well enough to satisfy my curiosity.
And that’s what’s so baffling – the author gives us several info-dumps on the magic system by putting them into conversations between Arneth and Zaleck, but I still didn’t have a clear picture of the world the characters were navigating. Like, what is the government structure of the kingdom they live in? Is it a kingdom? Why can representatives of the “Death Kingdom” act here with such impunity? What even is this Death Kingdom and the flow casters that rule it?
Come to think of it, we don’t really get many clear explanations as to how flow casting really works. We are told that there are two types of casters: those who sense life energy, and those who draw on death energy, but then we never talk about the life casters again. We are told that flow casters can call on nature’s elements, but only once per element; how does that work exactly?
Maybe more of these questions will be answered in the next book, since this is only the first book in a series. As such, it has a thankless job of setting up a brand new world as well as introducing us to characters the readers should like enough to be willing to follow for several books.
That’s where the main weakness lies, at least for me. I didn’t particularly like Zaleck, and he is our main protagonist. It’s his coming-of-age story we are following. For most of the book, he comes across as a whiny and spoiled little brat. And then he suddenly gets this upgrade right at the end, where he becomes mature and badass. There was no organic progression to that point. He is irritating and mostly useless for 80% of the book, relying on Arneth and Vellis to save him over and over again, and then all of a sudden he survives the magical backlash that has been killing flow casters for centuries? That was rather unbelievable.
His whole characterization is rather wonky as well, especially at the beginning of the story. It feels like the author started with one backstory in mind for Zaleck, then changed his mind halfway through, but forgot to change the earlier bits to fit the new backstory.
For example, Zaleck follows a friend into the woods the day he gets captured, and the way that chapter reads, it seems like those two are good friends. Yet Zaleck never mentions that boy again, or even acknowledges that the boy was seriously hurt or possibly killed by his captors. And further into the book, when Zaleck talks about his childhood, he says that he didn’t have any friends, and that other kids were distant and even hostile to him because of his odd appearance. So if that was the case, who did he follow into the woods in chapter 1, and why?
There are some other narrative inconsistencies, but all in all, it was entertaining enough read. However, I do not care about Zaleck enough to pick up the next book in the series.
PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.