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A review by taisie22
Darkstorm by M.L. Spencer
4.0
Sent to Aerysius to avert a possible war, Ambassador Branden Reis of Bryn Calazar is also the lover of Sephana Clemley. Both are also mages. When Sephana's acolyte, Merris Bryar, uncovers a plot at a high level, Branden realizes there is more danger than just war between the two countries. He sends Merris to his brother, Quin Reis, to gain his aid in defusing the plot on that side.
I'll make a confession right here. Somehow I got confused in the order of these books and read DarkMage (the next book in the series) first. I liked it but realized I was missing some important backstory so now I'm reading these books in order. Darkstorm is a fastmoving epic with a lot of characters and magic, good, evil, and betrayal. The worldbuilding is excellent; the story pops with small details that draw the reader in and makes this world real.
The characters aren't realized as fully, but I was okay with that for the most part. I did wonder about motivations and emotions in some sections but I enjoyed the story too much to care much. The one exception was Merris; she was pretty schizophrenic in her motives as well as her apparent appearance. She starts out as an acolyte running through tunnels; I took her to be fairly young and untried. Suddenly, she's a femme fatale enticing all the men around. Her character does a 180 also though there's an explanation for that. But I wasn't buying the sudden confidence that apparently leads to her new beauty; if that was the case, why didn't she use sex to blackmail Prime Warden?
I also would have liked a longer book with more backstory. Maybe that's me, but I enjoyed the section about the horse people from Khazahar Steppe. I wanted to know more about them and then what happened to them. Maybe I'll get the answers in the rest of the story.
Still, there's some fine writing here. I'll keep going with the series and hope for more depth to this otherwise great story.
I'll make a confession right here. Somehow I got confused in the order of these books and read DarkMage (the next book in the series) first. I liked it but realized I was missing some important backstory so now I'm reading these books in order. Darkstorm is a fastmoving epic with a lot of characters and magic, good, evil, and betrayal. The worldbuilding is excellent; the story pops with small details that draw the reader in and makes this world real.
The characters aren't realized as fully, but I was okay with that for the most part. I did wonder about motivations and emotions in some sections but I enjoyed the story too much to care much. The one exception was Merris; she was pretty schizophrenic in her motives as well as her apparent appearance. She starts out as an acolyte running through tunnels; I took her to be fairly young and untried. Suddenly, she's a femme fatale enticing all the men around. Her character does a 180 also though there's an explanation for that. But I wasn't buying the sudden confidence that apparently leads to her new beauty; if that was the case, why didn't she use sex to blackmail Prime Warden?
I also would have liked a longer book with more backstory. Maybe that's me, but I enjoyed the section about the horse people from Khazahar Steppe. I wanted to know more about them and then what happened to them. Maybe I'll get the answers in the rest of the story.
Still, there's some fine writing here. I'll keep going with the series and hope for more depth to this otherwise great story.