drgnlv 's review for:

The Battlemage by Taran Matharu

DID NOT FINISH

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I am almost at the end of this book and cannot force myself to read any more. So disappointed because I loved the first two and really wanted to like this book. But this story pretty much ended halfway through and then the book just kept GOING and GOING and GOING with all new characters and some old ones that didn't even matter. Despite some cool battle scenes, there was literally no reason to read the climax of this book. Why? Because it lacked one crucial thing: Emotional Stakes.

So, I am putting this book down mere pages from the end because literally nothing that is happening matters to the emotional journeys the characters have been on for the last two books and the beginning of this one.

This is what I think Matharu should have done, but only read if you've finished the book or have no intention of reading it, because it's all spoilers:

Spoiler

When the dwarven army show up in Corcillium, the disaster should NOT be averted. Marthu should have kept up the high stakes and ratcheted up the tension even more by having the human soldiers move against the dwarves. Now it is Fletcher's goal to get all the dwarves out of the city as quickly as possible, so he takes the entire dwarven population to his lands, including the recently-trained dwarven army. Now they have their own little plot of land, but his own people are struggling with having to share what they thought would be all theirs and so Fletcher has to work hard to try to solve human-dwarf strife. THEN the pass is attacked and it's not just crucial that Fletcher and his army of dwarves protect it to save Corcillum, but also to save literally the ENTIRE population of dwarves that now lives just beyond the path. The stakes are intense and personal. At the last moment, when all seems lost, the elves swoop in to help and all the characters that we were following at the beginning of the novel are leading their people to work together against this outside foe. But it's not over yet, for the albino orc knows where Fletcher is and targets him at the end of this exhausting battle, hoping to take out Fletcher and his Drake. Fletcher has to fight this monstrous dragon WHILE his people are below, humans, dwarves, and elves fighting for a common goal. In the end, when they are successful, they will have finally proven to the entire kingdom that humans, dwarves, and elves can work together without prejudice. This climax and ending follows the emotional stakes of the ENTIRE trilogy and would have required very little revision from what actually happens in the book. I wish I had been a beta reader for Matharu, because this seems like such a simple fix and the book would have been so much more successful as a story and an ending to a trilogy. That is all.