Scan barcode
A review by rainsynch
The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso
3.0
First things first: the worldbuilding here was fascinating and I love the concept overall. The plot was decent enough even if every twist could be spotted coming a mile away. I did for a time consider the main character was mage marked and taking a potion to conceal it, but the reason was not that.
There are several LGBT characters, but not too much focus is given to their sexualities. It's mentioned, basically; there is a married gay couple and Zaira is bisexual, but these are not facts that take up more than a few sentences here and there, tops. The main character is heterosexual and there's a romance subplot for her that sort of takes away from the worldbuilding/other relationships.
The bad: the book doesn't focus on Zaira and Amalia's relationship enough, in my opinion. The mage who is tethered does not receive much focus in this book, and I feel that putting more time into developing their relationship and the mage herself would have served the story much better than focusing on a sort of lackluster romance subplot with Marcello. I also found most of the secondary characters mention to maybe have been better choices for main characters. Amalia was at her best with the characters she got the least time with, and the secondary characters had more interesting stories and motivations we didn't get to hear enough of.
I feel that it would have been a much better story if the author had slowburned the romance even further and instead focused on establishing her characters and their motivations and how they interacted with one another. It seems a disservice to the characters and the readers to make Zaira almost a non-entity sometimes. She's occasionally on screen but can feel remarkably secondary and occasionally even tertiary to the plot, for all that she is integral to the start of the story.
While I intend to read the second book, I get the feeling this is one of those series that will have glimmers of having had the potential for being great but which fell short and focused far too much on the tired starcrossed lovers trope with honestly a sort of boring take on the dynamic rather than focusing on the other relationships that came off as far more fascinating and real.
There are several LGBT characters, but not too much focus is given to their sexualities. It's mentioned, basically; there is a married gay couple and Zaira is bisexual, but these are not facts that take up more than a few sentences here and there, tops. The main character is heterosexual and there's a romance subplot for her that sort of takes away from the worldbuilding/other relationships.
The bad: the book doesn't focus on Zaira and Amalia's relationship enough, in my opinion. The mage who is tethered does not receive much focus in this book, and I feel that putting more time into developing their relationship and the mage herself would have served the story much better than focusing on a sort of lackluster romance subplot with Marcello. I also found most of the secondary characters mention to maybe have been better choices for main characters. Amalia was at her best with the characters she got the least time with, and the secondary characters had more interesting stories and motivations we didn't get to hear enough of.
I feel that it would have been a much better story if the author had slowburned the romance even further and instead focused on establishing her characters and their motivations and how they interacted with one another. It seems a disservice to the characters and the readers to make Zaira almost a non-entity sometimes. She's occasionally on screen but can feel remarkably secondary and occasionally even tertiary to the plot, for all that she is integral to the start of the story.
While I intend to read the second book, I get the feeling this is one of those series that will have glimmers of having had the potential for being great but which fell short and focused far too much on the tired starcrossed lovers trope with honestly a sort of boring take on the dynamic rather than focusing on the other relationships that came off as far more fascinating and real.