The Awakened Mage [Anglais] [Broché]

So being the good little reader I am, I read and reviewed the Innocent Mage (Book 1) first. I was a bit disappointed there with very little going-ons occurring. In here, book 2, I really felt that punch to the face which Prince Gar receives. At least... I may have preferred it over this.

Harsh? A bit, I'm sure. I don't mean to be. But still, and again, there's -nothing- happening in these books. We have entire chapters devoted to how worried one character is about this, or where these other characters want their location of conspiracy to be (and yet not actually show any conspiring occur), and so forth and so on. I found myself growing anxious as I neared the end of the book, wondering when something large and grandiose would happen. Will Barl's Wall fall? Will the Final Days consume the lands and kill thousands? Will the big nasty bad guy go on a rampage? In the last twenty pages of this 712 page book, yes.

The author seems to prefer set-up over result. She spends a large majority letting us know what action will happen, then skips over the action we crave and summarizes what took place after the fact. And she does it all with characters that never really seem to... change. I waited until this book to pass judgment, and so I have. Many of the characters remain stuck in the cookie-cutter shape the author presented them. The villian was always snarling, racist, and vindictive. (It would have helped to add a little backstory to him.) The "sea slug" character remained a sea slug -- snobby and pretentious. The leading lady, though I could see the author tried with her, failed in convincing me she was anything but conniving and angsty despite her efforts to pass off as harsh and strong. The only character I found making me believe they were actually human was Darran, the pretentious-turned-caring servant to the prince.

All in all, this was a major disappointment. I really didn't want it to be. I wanted to like these books. I wanted to say, "Good job, Karen," but I honestly don't know if I can. At times, I didn't know if I was reading polished, published material or fanfiction. It takes a great effort to write 1300+ pages of a story, and for that I -do- give the author credit. Other than that, I can't say much else.

A fantasy story extremely light on the fantasy, a political piece extremely light on the politics, an adventure extremely light on adventure.
Karen Miller offers us a story more or less devoid of an original setting, decidedly sparse in character detail, and deviously unimpressive in wording. Everything is more or less stock fantasy, you've visited better versions of this world already, and with better characters to inhabit them.
It's a fun bedside/beach book at best, and I've managed to finish the duology without too much discomfort, but no part of this story strikes me as inspiring or original.
Rather than draw us through a sequence of events that teach us about the true nature of her characters and this created world, Miller seems content to spell it out for us... bluntly and repeatedly over the course of over a thousand pages. We're given a cast of characters whose intentions are painfully clear to the reader, or, if they are dishonest, excruciatingly elaborated upon to hammer in the fact that they are as such. It's political fantasy without the cleverness and credibility, combined with the pop fantasy aspect, only without the charm and voice. George R. R. Martin meets Terry Brooks, minus the positive aspects of either author.

My rating was based upon the story, but if I were to be entirely honest, this duology would be demoted to a single star for the multitude of typographical errors commited in the final print by Orbit. Among other things, Orbit seems to have a severe issue with its staff understanding the difference between apostrophes and quotations, and in these books they frequently abuse both devices.

Anyone looking for groundbreaking genre fiction will not find it in The Awakened Mage. Anyone who enjoys fare standard to the genre, well executed, will be quite happy.

Picking up right where The Innocent Mage left off, Ms. Miller zips us through an ascension of events that had me feeling I was right at the climax of the book when I still had 200 pages to go - and then carried me through those final 200 pages with aplomb.

Building off of the first book, the characterization in The Awakened Mage does its predecessor one better. Asher is as enjoyable as before, but all the other main characters - Darran, Daphne, Matt, Gar, Willard are fleshed out further and made more whole. We are given a better team of heroes to root for and a more despicable band of sycophants and evildoers to root against.

The dialogue in The Awakened Mage, much like that in The Innocent Mage is well done. As I said in that review, dialogue is one of Ms. Miller's strength. I also said, in my previous review, that her prose is competent. It is a matter of degree, but I think the practice derived from the first resulted in improvement in this, the second.

My greatest criticism, however, ultimately does delve into the fact that Ms. Miller is not breaking new ground. To be plain, every character that you think should die, does, and every character the plot demands live lives, and those that could go either way are liberally and arbitrarily either left alive or carelessly killed just to remind us that the world is dangerous. Just as I thought JK Rowlings undoing of the owl Hedwig in her final book was a bit of a copout, so too are some of the deaths that occur in this book. If I take the final demise of one of the more sycophantic characters in the book as an example - Ms. Miller could have as easily kept him alive to suffer the knowledge and humiliation of his actions. This would not only perhaps have been more just for the character - he deserved worse than he got - but also slightly novel for a fantasy genre tale. But no, he got exactly what the norms dictate he should have.

Gar's final treatment was particularly unimaginative.

In short, I would have liked to see Ms. Miller get just a _little_ unorthodox with how she ended the tale.

My other criticism may simply be a mistake on my part. However, I got the sense in several locations that Ms. Miller either hadn't made up her mind how she was going to end the book until she actually ended it, or some brilliant editor somewhere convinced her to change the ending (wouldn't surprise me that a commerical editor encouraged the other to stick closer to convention than create something even a little bit different), because more than once there is some pretty strong foreshadowing of events that end up not taking place.

It's possible these were meant to throw us off the trail, but rather, in my opinion, they end up being broken promises, or worse, uselessly occupied space on the page. I would be curious to hear if, among other things, some incarnation of Barl was not supposed to appear at some point in the tale.

I was similarly surprised that, after all of the buildup, some of the supposed aid Asher was supposed to get from 36 or so friends seemed completely irrelevant to the story. A variety of potentially intriguing components to the final climax I expected to see some variation of never materialized, and instead an almost Hallmark, trite little device ended the tale. Again, I blame a commerically minded editor somewhere.

Criticisms aside, I cannot deny that for all but the last few pages of the book I was riveted, standard fantasy fare or no.

The duology is an achievement of which Ms. Miller should be rightfully proud. Not the greatest fantasy ever, but certainly deserving of being labeled, 'good'.