The Innocent Mage concluded

Asher is the reason I like The Innocent Mage. Asher is not your typical fantasy hero, there are no dreams of fame and renown, no wishes to be a knight or other hero. He wants to be what he was raised to be, a fisherman, he just wants his own boat to sail with his father and to break away from his brothers' business. Asher isn't even a reluctant hero, always saving people and being heroic but trying to deny it, claiming to be a bad man. Asher has no idea that he is everything to Jervale's Heir and The Circle. It's very refreshing to read a fantasy novel where the lead is neither a reluctant hero nor a typical knight of lore. If you like fantasy novels you will like The Innocent Mage, Asher and the rest of the cast of characters are realistic and fun to read. The plot does not twist and is fairly straightforward, but very entertaining. If The Innocent Mage is any evidence to the quality of Karen Miller's (a.k.a K. E. Mills) work, then she is a fine author indeed, and I think I'll be reading a lot more of her work.

The Innocent Mage

The Innocent Mage (first book in the Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series) takes place in a kingdom called Lur, which cut itself off completely from the rest of the world several hundred years before the story takes place. The citizens of Lur consist of two peoples, the Doranens fair haired, beautiful, noble, magic workers, and the dark haired, hard working commoners, the Olken. The Olken have always lived in Lur, whereas the Doranen fled to Lur from the homeland by a woman called Barl who by now is basically Jesus, she cut Lur off from the rest of the world to protect her people and the Olken from her evil lover Morg. The main character is an Olken and the youngest son of a fisherman, his name is Asher and he is twenty years old. Asher dreams of buying a fishing boat for his father and himself and of having enough money for his father to live out the rest of his days comfortably. To make these dreams come true Asher sets off to spend a year in the capitol city of Dorana working and saving all he earned. The book is written in three parts and the bulk of the story takes place in fair Dorana. Asher is completely unaware that a secret society called the Circle watches over him, their leader known to them as Jervale's heir (it has not really been explained who Jervale was) has proclaimed him to be the Innocent mage, a kind of secret messiah that the Circle has been waiting for, for centuries. I won't give away anymore of the plot but I will quote to you Jervale's prophecy. "In the Final Days shall come the Innocent Mage, born to save the world from blood and death. He shall enter the House of the Usurper, He shall learn their ways, He shall earn their love, He shall lay down his life, And Jervale's Heir shall know him, and guide him, and enlighten him not."

book reviews

Sorry for the delay in posting, but Eric has given me a new idea for posts. He suggested that I post book reviews. It's going to take me awhile to write up a review that really satisfies me, but I do have a book in mind for my first review, It's called "The Innocent Mage" by Karen Miller. It's a fantasy novel that I read very recently, and I thought was rather good. It was slow reading at first but it started to pick up the pace a few chapters in. When I finished it I went out less than a week later to get the sequel "The Awakened Mage", but I won't read it until I finish the review of the first. If it takes me very long to write my review I may just post it a piece at a time.