Mage's Blood (Moontide Quartet)

Product Information

I recommend this book to any Epic Fantasy lover or even for people looking to get into the genre, as it certainly got me back into reading Epic Fantasy. Most of the nations and cultures in this book bear marked resemblances to those in our reality -- even when it comes to religion and geography. Hair isn’t afraid to take the story where it needs to go; the results are hard to swallow because by the end I became attached to these characters and I didn’t want to see them suffer.

The action scenes are creative, especially when magic is involved–he tries to show what mages can really do and the often terrible consequences.Another familiar tropes is the girl who is married away against her will to a powerful and mysterious old man. It’s probably a case of my expectations being too high from the high ratings and from several glowing reviews that I only skimmed over. The Moontide Quartet is an epic fantasy series that’s highly recommended by one of my favorite booktubers—Kitty G—and it has been on my radar for years now, and it is thanks to her that I finally gave this series a go. This means an author can focus on the story and characters, and as a result, the pace of a book can more quickly engage the reader. In neighbouring Northern Lakh, Ramita Ankesharan instead of having a comfortable life of love next (shabby) door, finds herself a commodity in family bargain and is traded away to a distant land in what is a rather humiliating marriage of convenience.

Magic is passed down through heritage starting from the ascendant mages who built the Leviathan Bridge. The first thing you notice will be the obvious parallels in earth geography and naming conventions (shihad=jihad, Hebusalim=Jerusalem, etc) and similarities in religions, races, and cultures. People of color are discriminated against, homophobia is rampant (the word "cocksucker" was used with the subtlety of a toxic gamer), and the one intersex person that appears is treated as a vile, pitiable thing.Reading it, I was struck by how every single viewpoint character on the continent of Yuros was evil, selfish, conniving, a murderer etc.

It has everything a fan could want - detailed magic, good characters and evil characters (of both genders) and some in between, a compelling plot, and twists aplenty. Who knows, if the quarantine goes on for another year or two, I might even become desperate enough to pick the second volume.And I usually find something good to say even about the most commercial and safely traditional epics that are making it to my reading list. But one day she arrives home to find, to her horror, that her father has promised her to another man who is wealthy and powerful, the greatest mage in the known world: Antonin Meiros. The parallel to Islamic/Indian cultures clashing with western culture is something that I was interested in because of everything that is going on in the world today. Over on the eastern side of the world we get a slew of characters and this is where David Hair excelled in his world building.

I will say thought the things I found most interesting were the Moontide bridge and the close orbit of the moon … which makes the sea so rough it’s impassable by ship. I would say it probably took me the first 100 or so pages to really get into this story, but after that I was utterly sucked in and all I wanted to do was follow the storylines of the characters and see what would happen next. If all else fails, throw in school for magicians, a lost artifact of immense power and as many scenes of explicit sex as the plot can carry. Alaron is one-quarter mage, and his rich aunt Elena (yes that one) is paying his way through mage school. So in an act of treachery, the Imperial legions attack over the bridge in 904 and take Hebusalim in an orgy of blood and destruction while Meiros chooses non-interference rather than breaking his famed bridge and open war with the Empire, so he ensures hatred from both sides.The first half of Mage’s Blood challenged my patience, but the pay-off—and hopefully the rest of the series—in the second half was bloody rewarding. I don't need perfect characters who fall into the chosen one trope, but something about their faults really just rubbed me the wrong way and I often found them frustrating and unlikable.