Angel Mage

Literary Merit: Good
Characterization: Great
Recommended: Yes
Level: High School

This definitely reads like a first book in a series with a lot of characterization and build up, but it's worth the slow pacing wait to get to know this fantasy world and characters. The story is a feminist Three Musketeers inspired adventure. The majority of the book is spent introducing readers to our villain and four main characters who become our heroes. Each has a distinct voice and backstory that draws the reader in and immediately makes me feel invested in their lives. I could read entire books just about each character, and yet Garth Nix seamlessly weaves together these stories as they eventually meet up and figure out why they feel so closely bonded to show more one another. The world and its magic system are also imaginative and I love reading in this world. Angelic magic is called upon using painted icons but at a physical cost to the one using the magic. I haven't loved a magic system this much in quite some time, and I love reading a high fantasy that is as well done as adult fantasy, but at an accessible level for young readers. I look forward to reading more in this series. show less

This book, while it did have wonderful world building, never quite grabbed my attention whole-heartedly. I struggled through some parts of the narrative, and at a certain point it kind of became annoying to read from Liliath's point of view because of how entitled she is. However the set up for the magical system is very interesting and I do want to know more about it.

The audiobook was well read and I really liked the four protagonists: the musketeer, the scholar, the clerk and the student doctor. Dorotea (the scholar) was my favourite; I love the way she baffles people when she doesn’t react the way they expect her to.

I didn’t enjoy hearing about the antics of the antagonist, although the final analysis of her motives was unexpectedly satisfying, and I didn’t start to get interested in the system of angel magic until the story was nearly over.

(Maybe I should read The Three Musketeers before I read any more fantasy inspired by it?)

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83 points, 4 ¼ stars

Quote:

It would have been natural for her to ask how long she had been in the coffin. But that was not her first question. She thought only of what was needful, for her all-consuming plan.

Review:
I really enjoyed Angel Mage. In part because I really like reading Angels in fantasy. In part because Garth Nix is an amazing writer. And in part because of the influences Garth Nix drew from to create this book: The Three Musketeers.

This book is a mystery throughout, wrapped up in the worldbuilding. It isn't a murder mystery, which is a bit tired. No, it is a mystery for how the world is the way it is, when it wasn't that way before. I really, really show more enjoyed this approach. It made me so interested in pretty much every question I had because I really needed to know the answer.

I really enjoyed the Angels, too. The people call these forces they call upon to do magic Angels, and they are without form. But calling upon the angels have a cost: parts of their life. For lower order Angels, like seraphim and cherubim, hardly any time from the inquirer to matter. For the higher orders such as principalities and archangels, it can take years off their life. And still the use of Angels is pervasive across everyone in the world.

Except the outcasts of Ystara, who fled from their lands after a terrible calamity started happening to them. If Angel magic was used on Ystarans at all, one of either two outcomes happen: they turn into a ravaging beast or they turn to ash. So the mystery is why does this happen? And what do the characters have to do with why this happens?

There is a surprisingly large cast of main characters, who all have their own "thing". There is Liliath who has come from the past to try and set things back to rights. Liliath the ultrapowerful, the one for who Angel Magic doesn't seem to have a cost. Then there are four people who are mysteriously connected to what is going on. The doctor Simeon, the clerk Henri, the angel icon-maker Dorotea, and the musketeer Agnez. All four who coincidentally meet together and feel a connection to each other while having a part to play.

Angel Mage was a bit of a slow burner. Yet I was very curious to figure out what was going on. Sometimes, I just wanted the book to get to the point, though. It is also notable that until the last 10% of the book or so, I genuinely had no idea how this could possibly be a standalone. There just was so much left to do! Then Garth Nix just dumps you into that ending without any fanfare, and you're going to be just as shocked as I was when you get there.

I received this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Garth Nix, Katherine Tegen Books, and Edelweiss for providing the opportunity to review this copy. show less

I remember owning a couple of books from this author’s Abhorsen series years ago but I never read them. Even this book wasn’t on my radar, but when I happened to read the synopsis around the time of its release, I thought it was a bit different from my usual reads and wanted to give it a try. I can’t say I was blown away by it, but it turned out to be a good read.

I liked the idea of this world, each kingdom having its own archangel with their own host of lesser angels, and the mages of the kingdom being able to summon them using icons. I particularly loved the way the icons are described in detail and it would be very interesting to see some artwork related to it. But we are never given any details of the world itself, beyond the show more basics. It’s almost not until the end that the Doom of Ystara is revealed, and while it made for a nice mystery, I just wasn’t sure the revelation was worth the wait. There are also too many names of people we care nothing about, a hierarchy of the angels which I couldn’t remember at all, and so many different angels who could be summoned that I stopped who was capable of what magic. The only part of the world that I could remember atleast a little was the top most power players in the kingdom of Sarance and their archangel.

The best part of the book was that it was fast paced right from the get go, with the readers being thrown in the middle of the action in the prologue itself. As there are too many characters introduced to us in the beginning, it took a while for me to realize who the important ones are and then try to remember them. This book is told through third person (I think) and had a level of detachment in the narrative style which prevented me from getting to know any character closely. I found the dialogue also to be a bit repetitive and annoying at times. There are only a few action sequences but I thought they were described very well. But on the whole, I was very interested to know what the end goal was and how it would be achieved, and that’s what sustained me to keep going. I’m also a bit conflicted about the ending - it felt underwhelming but also appropriate, so I don’t know what to say about it.

Whenever there is an ensemble cast, I’m always excited to get to know them all but unfortunately, that didn’t happen here. Lilliath is probably the only one we spend a significant amount of time with, and she was very much a mystery throughout. All I could understand was that despite her promises to her followers, she really seemed very selfish and had her own motives, without any care to protect those around her. Among the other four main characters, the only one I really got to know a bit was Dorotea. She is a scholar and has powers that no one understands but I loved how confident she was in herself, and just wanted the opportunity to continue her education. Her quest for knowledge and her belief that books are the biggest treasure really endeared me to her. Henri, Simeon, Agnez and Dorotea’s instant connection and friendship was also lovely to read about, but it would have been nice to know a bit more about them individually.

To conclude, I think this was a book that had a lot more potential but not all of it worked on page. If you have read the author’s previous books and enjoyed them, then the writing style might work for you. If you like books which focus more on the plot but not a lot on characterization, then this might be the right book for you. It has an interesting world and magic system, but there was just something missing. And I also feel it could have been better fleshed out if it was a duology rather than trying to compress it all into a standalone book. show less

Not the first time Nix has had a morally ambiguous or villanous protagonist. Fantasy in a renaissance/medieval with a magical system based on the calling of angels.
Liliath, the maid of Ellandra, raise in a neighboring country after 100+ years of magical sleep to pursue her obsession once again.
Her pursuits tangle up the descendents of escapees from Ellandra, an unlikely quarter of youngsters, the Queen and her musketeers as well as her cardinal.
Although the magical system is inventive, the story reads like Rachel Hartmans Seraphina and Alexander Dumas Musketeer stories, making it feel a bit derivative.
As a reader I got distracted by the Musketeer references, trying to remember the plots and people to map them to the story.
Other show more than that, the story was pretty wellwritten, apart from the monologues at the very end. show less

While not by any means a young adult or middle-grade novel, the story reads like one with its basic sentence structure and relatively simple plot. We never really get insight into Liliath’s motivation or her obsession even though it is the driving force of the entire story. There is a distinct lack of insight into all of the characters in fact. The whole story is very superficial, more action than character development even though the characters are what make the story. The whole experience is very unsatisfying.