The Innocent Mage

I bought The Innocent Mage like I do most things: On a complete whim. Fortunately it turned out to be a purchase for the better. Even though it isn’t groundbreaking in any way and a few of the characters border on insultingly arch typical, it was a well enough read that I spent a majority of my weekend reading it instead of pounding nails in my dick or whatever.

The setting is this impossibly well-off nation called Lur that’s secluded from the rest of the world by magic~ barriers, making it invisible by sea and unreachable by land. Lur is inhabited by niggers Olken and crackers Doranen. The Doranen use their super-cool magic to placate the weather, preventing all of the fun things like tornados and hurricanes, in return for the Olken behaving like slaves for no apparent reason.

MC is an Olken fisherman who comes to the capital so he can get rich and buy his dad a bunch of nice things. He’s your basic “Do whatever I want because I’m a fucking ROGUE” character. Don’t expect anything else out of him. He’s perfectly crafted to have a mindset instantly agreeable with, and all in all, you’ll probably like him.

The supporting cast is a little more interesting if only because combined they have variety, if nothing else. The royal family alone could be their own cast for a sitcom.

The writing is catchy, and Karen Miller does a pretty good job of giving each character their flavor of talk. The royals use big words and are overly polite all the time, MC Asher sounds like a redneck with downs, and everybody else fills in the middle-ground. If their is one issue it’s that there are a few key patterns that she likes to repeat a little too often. I lost count of how many times Asher interrupted other people, opting to finish their sentences with his desired choice of words.

I liked it, enough to buy the second half, which is an entirely necessary purchase if you want anything resembling a full story. This isn’t one of those books where it leaves a thread for future literature to follow. The whole fucking rope is just cut with a big knife, leaving frayed ends everywhere. I guess it’s the best way to ensure the next book gets readers though. Clean breaks are for writers lacking in business savvy.