The Innocent Mage by Karen Miller

Because I just started Innocence Lost, I decided to review the first book of the series The Innocent Mage. 

The Innocent Mage takes place in a kingdom protected from the horrific outside world by a magical wall. To protect this wall, magic is forbidden to all but to a minority upper class. A young fisherman accidentally befriends Prince Gar and becomes a reluctant witness to the politics surrounding this policy. 

Because this is the first book in the series (the prequel Blight of Mages is set several thousand years prior, but isn't required reading) the focus is on set up. Miller explores how the use of magic is regulated; who should use it, who should not, and the consequences if these two categories ever overlap. Because make no mistake, your relationship with magic is everything in this world. Even those forbidden to wield it, like the main character Asher, are still protected by the magically sustained wall. 

There isn't much action (though I have the feeling this will change in the sequel) but there is tension and fatal consequences to decisions. It feels like Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, where the focus is on where the main character sits in a tangled web of allegiances. Innocence is also a recurring theme. Both Gar and Asher could arguably be called the titular 'innocent mage', as both of them are being manipulated from various sides toward both benign and malicious goals. The consequences of innocence are explored, from the kingdom that exists in blissful ignorance of the horrors outside its borders, to the sheltered princess unable to perceive the hurt she's doing to her brother, to the well-meaning mage who accidentally invites an abomination into the royal household. Innocence is an imperfect defense.

Asher takes a while to warm up to; I found him irritating at first and Gar's interest in him to be a little too fortuitous. The author explicitly states that Gar wants someone who's not impressed by royalty, but Asher's attitude comes off as rude. He feels very much like a young Luke Skywalker before he gets the pride knocked out of him and becomes a better Jedi for it. Asher in comparison never has to face any negative consequences for the fights he picks and is actually rewarded for them.

Prince Gar is way more interesting. As the only member of the upper class without magic, he is known disparagingly as a cripple and cannot inherit the throne he was born to. He accepts this as necessary, understanding his duty, but shows real moments of poignant hurt and bewilderment at the rejection by his people. The contradictions of his character - how he both does and doesn't want his birthright - are complex and human, and far more compelling than Asher's blunt instrument approach to life. 

At first I couldn't understand what on earth drove these two characters into each other's orbit, or why they stuck around. Then about a quarter of the way in, there's a time-skip, and we can see Asher and Gar once they're past their initial rocky beginning. That's when their relationship suddenly clicked for me, and I could see why Gar needed Asher so much, and why Asher felt such loyalty to him. I'm wary of using time-skips to jump-start character development, but in this instance I think it was necessary. I did not want to sit through six months of them getting to know each other. From this point on, their friendship was the strongest, most interesting relationship in the book and also one of the driving sources of tension. 

Other characters - the conniving adviser, the spoiled princess, the aging king - were clearly recognizable archetypes, but managed to surprise me with their outcome or motives. While many of them make stupid or malicious mistakes, it's never as simple as good or evil. The people are clearly people with their own weaknesses and failings. Perhaps the only person I outright disliked was Dathne, and this was ironically because of the time-skip. I much preferred her vaguely antagonistic role in the beginning and found the sudden switch to romantic interest disorienting. If there'd been foreshadowing or build up toward it, I might have accepted it better, but with the time-skip it seemed to come out of nowhere. With all the development put into Asher and Gar's relationship, I'd have been less surprised to see them get together. 

Miller's put a lot of effort into exploring the cultural and legal complexities of this world, but I didn't get a sense of the color and life that I would from, say, Sara Douglass. It seemed a generic medieval European setting, which was a shame because it would only take a little tweaking to hint at a more unusual cultural background. The upper class originated elsewhere, so throw in a little bit of old-world Japan or a hint of Egyptian civilization, or a sprinkle of the Ottoman Empire. Occasionally there was some really lovely imagery, like Fane's display of magic or even Asher's first impression of Gar (there's a reason I ship these two), and I wanted to see more of that. 

All up, this is a well above average high fantasy story. I usually judge the success of a first book by whether the author makes me want to pick up the second, and she definitely did so here. Miller is fairly popular in Australia so you should be able to find her series at a local bookstore (I picked this one up at a publishing outlet down the street). Otherwise it's available online, including Booktopia, Amazon and Book Depository.