Review: different world, familiar characters, but a teaser, no ending
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 10, 2014
I found the beginning and middle refreshingly different from run-o-the-mill swordmage fare.  The sidekick Ezekial, an artifacts curator who always wants to study things, even dangerous things, is so similar to Daniel Jackson of Stargate SG-1 that I kept seeing his image and hearing his voice, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  The runaway bloodlust potential of battle mages in this world presents an interesting dilemma and help comes from another character.On the downside, about 2/3 of the way through, the author tilts toward the "everybody dies" (well, a lot of important people) formula that has been so over used I just groan when I see it now.  It also suffers from magic capability that escalates so fast most of the characters become irrelevant.  And another problem is the long multi-page introspections between parts of a conversation, or heck, between swings of a sword.  Life just does not proceed that way.  Even for a battle mage.  \And it is really short.  Barely a novelette.  I was feeling positively about it until in the last dozen pages it became incoherent, the characters both good and evil didn't hold true to their natures, the action seemed pointless and not related to the plot, and the plot went from interesting to stereotypical, and then it just plain had no ending whatever.  This should have been advertised as a paid teaser for some other work.