The Spirit Lens

My first impression of this book was that it would be a simple Fantasy adventure romp, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a murder mystery with suspenseful elements all around the edges. Throughout both the action and the more contemplative aspects of the investigation the motives, actions, and character of all the principle players (even the protagonist) are brought into question and their moral shades of gray are closely examined.

Novel and intriguing fantasy. It gets a bit bogged down in the machinations of the admittedly clever enemy, and loses some of the early momentum before the denouement that clarifies many of the issues.

Portier is an obscure cousin to the King, working in the library of a magical college in a land where magic has fallen ot of favour, being replaced by medieval level science and technology. He receives an urgent summons and discovers that the King had been the target of a an assassination attempt. The perpetrator was clearly being magically controlled, and Portier is the only magician the King knows he can trust. That Portier has failed all his magical tests so far is irrelevant to the King who believes magic is all sham anyway. Much of show more the evidence points to the Queen's door, but before the King can act on this he must have definite proof. Portier is tasked with finding this, and recruiting a rogue mage to aid him the first item of business is to study the artefacts found by the perpetrator's body - not a spirit lens which is eventually explained - but an unusual spyglass.

Told solely through portier's POV - a style I much prefer - we slowly learn some of the details about the country and the magic system. the latter is somewhat confused though as many at the College do not seem to be skilled practitioners and it only when Portier meets a rogue mage that he learns what true magic is. There is much focus on the banned subject of Blood magic, again not well defined. The characters are all well drawn though, and the landscape fully realised rather than being (as is too often the case) merely somewhere the heroes pass through. I particularly enjoyed having a clever enemy who seems to have sound reasons for doing what they do - another aspect far too often lacking in fantasy novels. Apart from the pacing their is little to complain about. show less

In this fantasy Renaissance kingdom, magic falters as scientific discoveries begin to be made. Portier's only dream was to be a sorcerer, but although he can sense magic he cannot perform it himself. Instead, he becomes the magical college's librarian. After long years spent among dusty books, he is summoned to the king's side to investigate repeated attempts on the king's life. Every piece of evidence points at the queen, but the king refuses to believe the worst of her without definitive proof. Portier enlists the help of the queen's foppish brother Ilario and a hedge-mage, Dante, in his quest for answers.

This is basically the most boring, anti-climictic, unengaging book I have read in a long time. The world building is pretty good show more (Blood Wars! exposing the blood line sigil on your hand at every meeting! secret heirs!) but the plot is sooooooooooooo slow, and the characters haphazard. Even worse, the few bits of plot Berg does grant the reader are either buried and given no emphasis, or are so obvious that every reader knew it from page 1. It takes nearly 300 pages to discover that Ilario, who twitters comically about his hats, is secretly a dashing and courageous blade? FUCKING DUH. Or that Michel and mage Orviene are evil? ALSO duh. It's hard to buy that Portier is an intelligent man--or even conscious--when he misses such incredibly obvious clues. And to add insult to injury, after slogging through ~500 pages of Portier stumbling upon clues and witnesses randomly blurting out the truth, there is no ending to the plot! Berg abruptly seems to have realized that her book is about to end, has an OFF SCREEN climactic trial, then drops a half dozen hamfisted clues and foreshadowing about Portier getting magic, Michel being just one cog in a larger conspiracy, and Dante supposedly going mad with a quest for power.

Reading this book was an exercise in frustration. I do not recommend it, and I do not intend to read anything else by this author. show less

I feel a little weird about giving this book (and its sequel) 5 stars, because they are not, and do not aim to be, Great Literature. This book certainly does not have the depth and layers of Eco's 'The Name of the Rose,' although it shares a similar atmosphere. However, for sheer entertainment value - I just love Berg's writing, and this is definitely one of her best.
It's a well-crafted genre mystery, with wizards.
Intrigue and plot twists abound, and there a lots of clues to put together and figure out.
The atmosphere is an enjoyable pseudo-Renaissance fantasy world, and the protagonist is a librarian (yay librarian heroes, even if my one quibble is that there could have been a bit more actual librarianship in the book!)
The librarian show more in question is a distant cousin of the king, and is summoned to court to secretly investigate a failed attempt on the king's life. The queen is suspected; the king believes her innocent... but will the investigation clear her name, or uncover layers of conspiracy and shady dealings? show less

This book begins a new series for Carol Berg, and I hope it will be a long one. Her main character is a self-doubting failed magician who discounts the skills he has, but finds himself coming through when it counts. The world she has created is seamlessly complete and unique, the characters are very well-rounded and complex, the plot twists and turns in reasonable but unpredictable ways.

In the eternity between new books by George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, I sometimes try a new author, just to fill the space. Usually, the experience serves to confirm my impression that I'm better off waiting or re-reading classics. This time, however, I think I need to expand my list of current authors worth reading to 3 (and this one actually meets deadlines...). Now I have to go read some of her earlier work.

Anyway, the strengths of this book are the characterization and the world-building. The characters are sympathetic and richly layered. There were a number of times when reading the book where some aspect of culture - religion, magic, history, politics, economics, etc. - came into play, and I had an aha! moment, realizing show more how some other aspect of the culture had risen out of this one. I like those moments. Plot-wise, it's almost more murder mystery than epic fantasy, but murder mysteries are good, too. show less

Let me start by saying I really enjoy Carol Berg as a writer. I absolutely loved her Rai Kirah series and also loved the second book in the Lighthouse Duet (the first one was a bit of a drag). But, for some reason, I had a very difficult time with this book. I didn't care about the plot, did not like the characters, and struggled through each page.

This book is about Portier de Savin-Duplais; a failed magical student who is called upon to help solve the mystery of an attempted assassination of the king. Joining him in this investigation are a foppish Noble named Ilario de Sylvae and brilliant (but grumpy) sorceror named Dante.

The premise sounded excellent and I really did enjoy Berg's intricate descriptions of the surroundings and the show more intricate magic system. I also enjoyed that this book is written in at a higher literary level. That being said I only read to page 100 and had a lot of problems even getting that far into this book.

I was not drawn into the mystery to find out who wanted to assassinate the King. The King was not likable, and to be honest, I really didn't care if someone assassinated him or not. He doesn't seem to do that good of a job running the kingdom, so I just didn't care. The mystery behind the Spirit Lens was intriguing but not intriguing enough to keep me hooked on the story.

I also did not enjoy the characters. Portier is so self-deprecating and spineless that I was kind of hoping for something (anything) to happen to him; he just never stands up for himself and bumbles through the book. Ilario is over stereo-typed as a pompous noble fop, I think he was supposed to add humor to the story, but for me he feel flat. Dante is the only character that redeems this book; the portion of the book where he was introduced into the story was entracing, but then he is not the focus anymore and I lost interest again.

This book is very long-winded. I loved beautiful descriptions, but that was taken to the extreme in this book. I found myself skipping full paragraphs and was still able to follow the story fine. Then I would stop back-up and reread what I had skipped just to confirm I hadn't missed anything (I hadn't). Around the point where I stopped more and more Frenchlike noble names are being thrown at the reader. All these names refer to characters that I have no frame of reference for, can't relate to, and can't remember.

In the end I just lost patience with it all. I was having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open to read more than a page or two at a time. I know Berg's books are set up very deliberately, but for some reason I just can't handle it with this one. I really wasn't enjoying it and I have a ton of other books to read so I stopped.

Overall this book just was not my thing; which is not to say it was poorly written...at times the writing was quite beautiful. I was just not drawn into the plot, did not like the characters, and thought the pacing was way too slow. If you are into deliberately paced fantasy mysteries this may be the book for you. If you like your plot a bit more frantic with deep characterization I would look elsewhere. If you are interested in reading books by Berg I would start with the Rai Kirah series; that characters and plot were much more engaging. show less