Based on the title I thought this would be about someone who would become a mage, not someone who becomes the princes errand boy. The title of the story threw me off, and I was continuing to read hoping that somewhere the prophecy you throw the main character into the mage role. Maybe actually have the main character performing magic outside of his race, or learn about his own races magic. I'm not sure if I was taking the title to literal but it seemed to just confuse me.

The plot isn't bad, and the character interaction is good but it's just plain boring. Like many of the other people who have put reviews on here, I continued reading hoping that the story would get a little exciting but it never came about. The ending of the book was just like the rest of the book, it didn't really revolve around the main character and left me saying... "Really that's all"?

I usually give a book 3 stars if I just can make it to the end, but the complete confusion and inability for the story to make me want to turn the page makes this a 2 star book. ( )

DNF'ed @ pg. 235 I had a lot of issues with Asher's voice. I may try this one again in audio form though, as I was enjoying the story...just not his narrative style.

an amazing book, this is probs going to be my book of the year choice! the story tells of a poor fisherman who becomes pals with a royal figure to earn extra cash as his right hand man in buisness. there is great dialogue and a interesting and unique story line ( )

You can find this review and many more on my blog:
Into The Heartwyld

This is one of those older fantasy boks that has been on my radar for awhile and in the last few months my best friend sent them to me and now im working my way through my huge backlist of owned books to read. So I started with this big guy.

I'm going to start with saying, this could have severely been cut down, because by the gods does the first 350 pages stretch forever in the lands of boring mediocrity political storytelling. I have nothing against political story lines but when its nonstop for pages and pages and there seems to be zero sign of any action what so ever coming into play it quickly loses its appeal for me. This book is 640 pages so the mere fact that it took 350 pages to finally get interesting and get some action going is not good in my book.

The magic system was almost non existent aside from really only having a few moments of it being shown other than that it was just told to us. It sounds interesting, there is a Weather Making magic used to help control the lands weather so the people never have to deal with the uncertainty of mother nature. This particular magic is talked about the most and the one we get to see, but other than that the magic just feels nonexistent. Oh a few times we got to see some hidden forbidden magic but it was only used for communication.

I did not care for Danthe at all, she felt rather useless besides telling us the prophecy and foreshadowing events. Other than that she just felt unimportant even though she was suppose to be important.

The love story that randomly pops up half way into the book was also weird and felt so forced and out of place. It just kind of springs up and I just could not take it seriously since there was no indication of this ever coming into play.

The best part of the book is pretty much the end of Part 2 and most of part 3, that's where all the action is at and where the story feels and gains any amount of interest. We finally get to see the magic talked about be used, still not enough to satisfy me, but that's where its at. The biggest thing that got me though was that cliffhanger. Never in my days of reading can I recall coming across that kind of cliffhanger. It just happens and then it ends. So if book two does not pick up n the exact spot this left off on I'm going to be livid, because while I found a lot of this boring that cliffhanger left me shocked and created an urge to come back. But I am going in with lower expectations than I did with this since I have now been introduced to Karen Millers writing style. ( )

This was a very good book but it focused on character developement way too much. All the action took place in the last 100 pages (out of 642) and the book ended in a cliffhanger. The last sentence of the book was "This story will be concluded on the Awakened Mage"



To be honnest this pissed me off. You see, when I read a 600 page book I expect it to have a conclusion even if it is part of a series. I don't need it to be the end but at least some kind of resolution. Since most authors can do it in a 2 page short story i don't think it's unreasonable to expect it in a book.

If this book wasn't stand alone it should have been named something like "The innocent mage part 1" or something similar. Now I'll have to wait 10 days until the "awakened mage" copy comes into my hands. Thanks a lot Ms. Miller...



That's the main reason I gave it 3/5 stars.

It's too bad because, while the book started really, really slowly, It was the first time since Sauron's youth that I found a vilain that was actualy clever. All the other ones so far were powerful but not devious. I hope the next part is a fitting end to the story.
( )