Summer 2018, Whispersync Audiobook & Kindle Books:

I blow straight through Wheeler's trilogy in what amounts to a little more than a book a day, so these are all going to end up running together.

I rather loved Lia's story, and getting to both read and listen to it. I love the Maston magic (even if it did ring a little too close to The Fountain from his most recent series I had picked up and run through). I loved Colvin's wandering, plodding uncertainty about everything, especially his feelings. I loved that this love story didn't end up looking like anyone of the clearly too-alike earlier ones in the Fountain Head double trilogy.

I mourned the descent of this gorgeous, glorious culture of virtues and faith as the handholds for real magic, and how the forcing of it was what spurned the world into blackness (which is in the reverse to what interests me about its centuries later follow-up trilogy). I believe people will enjoy these and run them rather fast. The characters are engrossing. The story goes everywhere, and I am left with a very clear feeling and idea of what this world looks like, and the fact its out there still living on, even though I'm no longer at the fire listening to its tale being told. ( )

Great fantasy series! ( )

I got lost in a book

Give me a reference for that one. As usual the author weaves a fantasy tale with familiar feeling passages that we recognize from our own religious and philosophical texts. Good on you Mr Wheeler ( )

Well written Young Adult Sword and Sourcery novel that I couldn't stay in sympathy with.

There are lots of good things to say about this book: the world is imagined in great detail and well described, it is well plotted, the main character is likeable, brave and compassionate, and the magic system is novel and well thought through. There are storms and babies abandoned on the Abbey steps, and swords and horses, an evil Sheriff, brave young knights, a corrupt King, a rebellion that turns into a war and of course, the fate of the world hangs upon the bravery of a very young girl.

And yet... I couldn't give myself up to this book.

As a book for young adults, I understand that some of the darker possibilities have to be toned down a bit, but books like "Divergent" and "Written In Red" or "Anna Dressed in Blood" manage to tap into a real sense of evil without have to get the splatter-movie level. "The Wretched of Muirwood" sells evil short. The bad guys are just that: bad guys. They are corrupt and brutal but they have all the reality of a faceless mob-boss in a Batman comic.

And the good guys are SO good, it's like biting into an over-sweet apple: it sets your teeth on edge.

But the real source of my lack of comfort with this book is the magic system. In this world, magic comes from accessing The Medium. Good Guys, born into the right bloodlines, do this by surrendering themselves to the will of The Medium, closing their mind to doubt and fear and doing what The Medium tells them to. Bad guys use an amulet-based technology to force the Medium to do what THEY want to do. The price they pay for this is a slow but inexorable poisoning of their souls.

In other words, the Good Guys in this a fanatical Jhadists that The Medium uses as magical suicide bombers while the bad guys are trying to level the playing field between themselves and an elite set of families who refuse to share either knowledge or power. I hate everything about this set of ideas.

The fact that this snagged at me badly enough to reduce my enjoyment of the book is. of course. a tribute to the quality of the writing.

I knew with absolute certainty that, if I was in this world, I would be a bad guy. I just hope I'd make a better job of it. ( )

Not more than average. Didn't grab me although there is worse fantasy out there. ( )