A review by driedfrogpills
The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso

3.0

I won't lie, I pretty much wanted to read this because of the cover and the promise of magic. The Tethered Mage starts out really strong, but once it got into the more political intrigue part of the plot I started to lose a little interest. But that's all on me, I'm not a big fan of stories driven by political games (for all that I keep running into books that involve them). The ending does pick up the pacing and the action, though, so I feel good about the sequel.

With Amalia as the narrator, the story feels more about her than anything else (so don't go into this like I did thinking we'd have two narrators or two sides of the story). I found her a little more naive than I would expect someone born into her world to be. She's sheltered in a way I would think the heir to the most powerful/most conniving political force wouldn't be? But I did appreciate that her mother's belief that her daughter will find her own strengths

Spoiler

for all that she does and doesn't. I still think it was a little deus ex machina that her mother's aid/spy showed up at the end to save Amalia from dying. I mean, I'm glad she did, but it felt like if you suspected something was afoot long enough for her to travel to the city, wouldn't you have gone one step further and stopped most of this from happening in the first place?

The minor characters were okay (Marcello is kinda dull to me but the other Falcons are fun), the possible-future-big-baddy is creepy and fantastic but I think my favorite part was the shifting antagonizing-to-friend-ship between Zaira and Amalia. More of these two doing things together and having more adventures.

Overall, the book is good if a little slow in the middle. Caruso does tell a decent story, and the plot has promise.