The Tethered Mage
Swords and Fire, Book 1
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The Tethered Mage
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Narrated by:
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Saskia Maarleveld
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By:
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Melissa Caruso
About this listen
'I couldn't put it down' Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library
In the Raverran Empire, magic is scarce and those born with power are strictly controlled - taken as children and conscripted into the Falcon Army.
Zaira has lived her life on the streets to avoid this fate, hiding her mage-mark and thieving to survive. But hers is a rare and dangerous magic, one that could threaten the entire empire.
Lady Amalia Cornaro was never meant to be a Falconer. Heiress and scholar, she was born into a treacherous world of political machinations. But fate has bound the heir and the mage. And as war looms on the horizon, a single spark could turn their city into a pyre.
SET IN A RICH WORLD OF POLITICAL INTRIGUE AND DANGEROUS MAGIC, THE TETHERED MAGE IS A SPELLBINDING DEBUT FROM A MAJOR NEW TALENT.
'An enchanting voice and an original world you won't want to leave' RJ Barker, author of The Bone Ships
'I raced through this exquisite debut in three days and adored it' Fantasy Book Review
'A breathtaking book. Equal parts fantasy and political intrigue, The Tethered Mage pulls readers relentlessly through labyrinthine turns of conspiracy, adventure and romance' BookPage
Books by Melissa Caruso:
Swords and Fire
The Tethered Mage
The Defiant Heir
The Unbound Empire
Rooks and Ruin
The Obsidian Tower
The Quicksilver Court
The Ivory Tomb
2018, Gemmell Morningstar Award for Fantasy Debut, Short-listed
©2017 Melissa Caruso (P)2017 Little, Brown Book GroupWhat listeners say about The Tethered Mage
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 18-02-2022
Extraordinary world building, wonderful characters
The Tethered Mage is an amazing world of fiction that genuinely grapples with the notion of magic and society. The author populates the world with vividly characterised people. The narrator has a delightfully expressive style with recognisably distinct voices for each character. I thoroughly enjoyed this!!!
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- N. Hill
- 14-12-2021
Very YA, nothing new here.
This was disappointing. I knew it had a YA feel going in, which already had me standoff-ish about it, but I also read other reviews saying that it wasn’t supposed to be YA. Despite the fact that YA is a category invented by publishers, YA books do tend to have a lot of the same tropes, especially simplistic characters and themes, tame violence and “insta-love” romances. With the reviews insisting that it is not YA, I thought I would give this a go. Unfortunately, I’m halfway through and I should have listened to the people saying it is YA.
The characters are very simplistic. There is no mature nuance to them despite there being ample opportunity for some moral conflict. The protagonist had that annoying characteristic where she is an heiress in a court filled with political intrigue but acts shocked when the possibility of an arranged marriage is brought up. I hate that. Characters in positions of power who act like marriage isn’t also a political act just doesn’t make sense if that’s the kind of world you’ve set up. If your characters are mature, and educated in your world, then why the hell wouldn’t they have considered this and probably been prepared for it? The pointless insta-love was also a definite YA trope.
The idea of jessed Falcons seemed like it was ripped straight from the Wheel of Time Sul’dam and their leashed domane, but without any of the nuanced treatment of free will and autonomy. Add to that the author’s use of the term “balefire” and I can’t help but compare it to Wheel of Time. Sorry, but Jordan did it better. Amalia has the task of “befriending” her leashed- sorry, jessed Falcon. She thinks she will do this by just being nice. Surely Zaira will understand that Amalia is nice because Amalia never meant to cage her in the first place, right? It was pretty disturbing how Amalia infantilised her with a “Here, I found your dog! Now you can trust me!” approach, while ignoring her position of power over Zaira. Meanwhile, now that Zaira is captured her power is no longer hers to control and she will likely be used as a weapon by other people for the rest of her life. I mean, fuck. That’s messed up. It could have been really interesting if the author had dived into how fucked up that is and explored the moral tensions, but she didn’t. Zaira came across as petulant and whiny, and Amalia as a Mary Sue. This simplistic portrayal of a morally fucked up situation is one of the main reasons this story came across as YA to me.
Amalia also has an issue where she needs to take a certain potion every day or she’ll die, and the idea that she could ever just forget about this fact was one of the most unrealistic things that happened. If your life depends on taking a potion every day, I doubt you would EVER forget it no matter what is going on, and you’d worry about getting to it during every second of uncertainty. Amalia forgets, but it’s okay! Someone brings the potion to her so it’s not even the cause of an interesting conflict because it gets solved the second we learn about it.
There were no new ideas here. Add to the above issues the fact that the worldbuilding, the other characters, and the writing were all very simplistic, and there was nothing that makes this book stand out enough for me to keep reading it.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Emma
- 23-09-2022
very YA
I like the idea of the book, and really tried to listen to it in its entirety but unfortunately it just because too much of the same YA tropes; done again and again.
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