The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller
"The Innocent Mage is come, and we stand at the beginning of the end of everything."
In The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller, Asher has left his family, fisherman's life, and small town to go to the big city, home of the royal family, to make as much money as he can to bring back to his father. He doesn't know that his coming has been foretold by a secret society as a start to what might be the end of days, and he won't be told a thing about any of it until they feel the time is right.
The story sucks you in pretty quickly, and you really come to care about most of the characters and their troubles and the friendship between Asher and Gar. The book sets up your expectations several times before surprising you with something out of the blue that changes everything... but in a good way that raises the stakes even higher, and ends on a major cliffhanger. I'm definitely going to pick up the next book, The Awakened Mage.
That said, Asher can have such a sour, insulting POV at times that he can sometimes be annoying, and the evil is the "muwahahahahaha!" variety, evil for evil's sake, while I prefer a more nuanced take.
In The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller, Asher has left his family, fisherman's life, and small town to go to the big city, home of the royal family, to make as much money as he can to bring back to his father. He doesn't know that his coming has been foretold by a secret society as a start to what might be the end of days, and he won't be told a thing about any of it until they feel the time is right.
The story sucks you in pretty quickly, and you really come to care about most of the characters and their troubles and the friendship between Asher and Gar. The book sets up your expectations several times before surprising you with something out of the blue that changes everything... but in a good way that raises the stakes even higher, and ends on a major cliffhanger. I'm definitely going to pick up the next book, The Awakened Mage.
That said, Asher can have such a sour, insulting POV at times that he can sometimes be annoying, and the evil is the "muwahahahahaha!" variety, evil for evil's sake, while I prefer a more nuanced take.