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Book: “The Outcast Mage” by Annabel Campbell
Publishing Info: Orbit, January 2025
Where Did I Get this Book: ARC from the publisher!
Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound
Book Description: In the glass city of Amoria, magic is everything. And Naila, student at the city’s legendary academy, is running out of time to prove she can control hers. If she fails, she’ll be forced into exile, relegated to a life of persecution with the other magicless hollows. Or worse, be consumed by her own power.
When a tragic incident further threatens her place at the Academy, Naila is saved by Haelius Akana, the most powerful living mage. Finding Naila a kindred spirit, Haelius stakes his position at the Academy on teaching her to harness her abilities. But Haelius has many enemies, and they would love nothing more than to see Naila fail. Trapped in the deadly schemes of Amoria’s elite, Naila must dig deep to discover the truth of her powers or watch the city she loves descend into civil war.
For there is violence brewing on the wind, and greater powers at work. Ones who could use her powers for good… or destroy everything she’s ever known.
Review: I think this book will be one of those odd reads that really works for certain fantasy readers, but then fails to connects to a bunch of others. To start with, the book throws readers into the deep end of an entirely new fantasy world. I’m on the record as very much enjoying this approach to world-building in fantasy, but it’s also a big ask of many more casual readers. For the most part, this approach worked for me here as well. I was more than happy to go along with the story and characters slowly piecing things together as they came.
What didn’t work, however, was that further into the book we did start getting more overt details into these world-building portions. Unfortunately, they often came in long chunks of straight exposition and info-dumping. These larger bits of explanation also came fairly far into the story, meaning that for the readers who would appreciate the straight presentation of facts rather than the immersive nature of the beginning, there’s a decent chance they might have already put the book down by the point they show up.
I also ended up struggling to enjoy many of the characters in this book. For the pros, I very much enjoy mentor/mentee relationships, so I really liked the portions of the book that focused on these two characters. I will also say that there is very little to no romance in this book, so it’s a great option for readers who perhaps feel overwhelmed by the amount of romance in fantasy recently (not me, but I know these readers exist, haha!).
That said, there were simply too many POV characters in this book. I know that I personally have a fairly low bar for the number of characters I want to follow during a book. It typically tops out at around 3, and by far I prefer a single POV altogether. But here there were, I think, 5 or 6 different characters we followed. By necessity, some of those got more page time than others, which often directly influenced my interest in their various stories. However, the sheer overwhelming number of them ultimately decreased my ability to connect to any of them. Beyond that, as I read, it began to be hard to differentiate between them, leaving me unsure of whose story I was finding halfway through a chapter. Again, this is a very subjective take, and I know a lot of fantasy readers enjoy large casts of characters. But it didn’t work for me here.
So this was a bit of a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the world that was introduced, but there were too many info dumps to make it smooth sailing. And I really like the focus on the mentor/mentee relationship, but there were too many other characters distracting from these two’s stories that I watered down the entire affair. I’ll likely stick around for the next book, as I’m definitely curious to see where the story goes from here.
Rating 7: A lot of potential and a strong central relationship was a bit hampered by shaky world-building and too many POVs to keep up with.
Reader’s Advisory:
“The Outcast Mage” can be found on this Goodreads list: All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in January 2025.
The Library Ladies 