The Mage Wars

Book Review: The Mage Wars

After having read the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, I was keen to start diving right into the history of this world – and that’s how I ended up here: right at the beginning! As the blurb says, this is set some three thousand years before the Heralds of Valdemar books, so I knew I’d been in for something quite different and probably something epic in a classical sort of way. Was I right? Yes – though not perhaps in the way I expected.

The title of the trilogy suggests something really quite grand and epic, but though this is true, the perspective of these novels really narrows the focus right down. We spend a lot of time with Skandranon – a gryphon – and this is in itself fascinating (it’s not often we see through non-human eyes). But we spend a lot of the rest of the time through the eyes of Amberdrake, who is a kestra’chern – somewhere between a ‘healer’ and a ‘companion’, but also a political advisor (with the skills of a masseuse thrown in for good measure). He’s quite a guy…

As with the Valdemar books, there are parts of this where the going is a little slow – in particular where the description and internal thought processes are really expanded upon. This is clearly an important part of the writing, and the characters are wonderfully developed, but at times it may be a little bit too much. The epic chapters are also quite daunting – most of them took me the best part of an hour to read, so not one to pick up and put down. That being said, when things kick off, they really kick off, so interest is piqued for sure.

The first book is the Black Gryphon and focusses on Skandranon, who is a gryphon and who is coloured (I bet you can guess this…) black. The black is important insofar as Skan is something of a stand-out gryphon with a big role to play in the ongoing ‘Mage Wars’. His good friend Amberdrake (the many-skilled man) is also key as both a healer, a political advisor, and something of a social detective. All in all, the war is going badly, and despite much effort, the much sought victory threatens to get away from Urtho, the Mage of Silence – which is where our heroes come in. Suffice to say, we end the book with a victory of sorts (though perhaps not as expected).

The White Gryphon is set about ten years later and still follows Skan and Drake (though now Skan is white from “shock”). We are now in a time of peace, and our protagonists have families to look after as-well as a city to govern. Unfortunately, their new neighbours aren’t happy with them just setting up a city in their territory, and though we don’t get to a ‘military’ situation, there is much tenseness. The book ends up with something of a detective feel to it, and I really liked the story – probably more than the first book, which I wasn’t expecting. The finale is a real corker.

Finally, we have the Silver Gryphon where Skan goes grey… I’m joking on that one. This third book actually focusses on the children some years later, and in particular the children of Skan and Drake who become ‘rangers’ and get their first mission. Suffice to say, things do not go well, and what we have is a survival novel – so quite different again! This is very cleverly done and really makes you think through a jungle survival problem like you’re there, but there are parts where perhaps it is a little too slow. That being said, the storyline is a good one and the climax excellent again – so I definitely enjoyed it overall.

So, there we have it – the Mage Wars. The wider series is definitely a series of books that I will dive into more in the future, and in fact after finishing this, I immediately went for the next book in the series. As it turns out though, the next trilogy is only “completing” later in 2023, so rather than jumping past it, I will leave the Valdemar books alone for a bit and go elsewhere. I will definitely be coming back to this series though – that’s for sure.