A review by peculiarb
Servant Mage by Kate Elliott

adventurous challenging dark fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes

2.0

 
Kate Elliot makes a valiant effort to craft a faced paced story about a fantasy world on the brink of revolution but it ultimately falls flat. 
 
The first half of the book was pretty good. It had good pacing that was balanced well with worldbuilding, with Fellian starting to unravel the lies she was taught during her training. I thought the characters were likeable while Fellian took care to maintain some distance between her and the rebels because she wasn't immediately convinced of their cause. I found this aspect to her character very interesting as the reluctance isn't something often seen in protagonists of this sort of story. It added unexpected depth to her character in a very efficient way that fit the story well. 
 
It's only after the halfway mark that the book took a turn for the worse as the pace picks up and rushes through to an ambiguous ending. This next paragraph will contain spoilers for the second half of the book so this is your warning to skip to the end. 
 
When they rescue the child, the group escapes through a demon dimension that was entirely out of place since it only created more unanswered questions and emerges into a manor with such a rigid class structure it put me off from the rebel cause entirely. Up to this point, we've spent time with a group that sees no class distinction and to have that all change was off-putting to say the least. Even when Fellian leaves to find her family in the hopes of her town gaining independence at some point, there's no epilogue to tie up those loose ends. Instead we're left with a maybe. 
On top of that, where I thought rescuing the child was going to become the single quest she would go one, she still has to go rescue the people in the cave which only further added to the feeling that the book had too much going on.
   
 
I think Kate Elliot raised some very interesting questions concerning types of government, propaganda, child indoctrination and trauma but didn’t give the book the length it deserved to answer those questions.