Angel Mage

Angel Mage by Garth Nix
Published by Gollancz on September 30, 2019
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 560
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 1473227712
Goodreads

More than a century has passed since Liliath crept into the empty sarcophagus of Saint Marguerite, fleeing the Fall of Ystara. But she emerges from her magical sleep still beautiful, looking no more than nineteen, and once again renews her single-minded quest to be united with her lover, Palleniel, the archangel of Ystara.

A seemingly impossible quest, but Liliath is one of the greatest practitioners of angelic magic to have ever lived, summoning angels and forcing them to do her bidding.

Liliath knew that most of the inhabitants of Ystara died from the Ash Blood plague or were transformed into beastlings, and she herself led the survivors who fled into neighboring Sarance. Now she learns that angels shun the Ystaran’s descendants. If they are touched by angelic magic, their blood will turn to ash. They are known as Refusers, and can only live the most lowly lives.

But Liliath cares nothing for the descendants of her people, save how they can serve her. It is four young Sarancians who hold her interest: Simeon, a studious doctor-in-training; Henri, a dedicated fortune hunter; Agnez, an adventurous musketeer cadet; and Dorotea, an icon-maker and scholar of angelic magic. They are the key to her quest.

The four feel a strange kinship from the moment they meet, but do not know why, or suspect their importance. All become pawns in Liliath’s grand scheme to fulfill her destiny and be united with the love of her life. No matter the cost to everyone else. . .

Fun fact: Garth Nix is one of my top 5 favorite authors. I have loved his Old Kingdom series and Keys to the Kingdom series for soooo long. I’ve talked a bit more in detail about his books in my Libraries in Literature post and Rainy Day Reads post, and have definitely mentioned him in a few others. When I heard he was publishing his first adult fantasy (Angel Mage) I was SO EXCITED. Like, this book has been on my TBR since it was announced basically.

So I preordered it, but naturally didn’t get to reading it until now, a month later. Which tbh is pretty good for my track record this year, seeing as how I preordered The Priory of the Orange Tree which came out in the beginning of February and I still haven’t read that… oops.

Back to Angel Mage…haha. It’s easy for me to get off track.

I think you can gather that I really really wanted to LOVE this book – I wanted it to be a new favorite and fall in love with it. Unfortunately that didn’t quite happen 😕. But I did still enjoy it, and there were still a lot of things that I liked about it.

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What I liked:

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I have always loved Garth Nix’s concepts of magic, and magical systems and this is no exception. In this world, magic is done by summoning angels to perform tasks. Each angel has a specific domain, and so can only carry out specific tasks. There are ranks of angels (Seraphim, Cherubim, Principality, etc) and the higher the rank, the more powerful the angel. Of course there is a cost – each calling of an angel will take away a certain amount of life from the magician. The least powerful angels may take an hour, or a day of your life, whereas the most powerful angel can take years.

Angels are summoned via icons, which are in the form of rings or brooches or etc that have an image of the particular angel you wish to call. I thought it was neat that mages learn to create icons of their own which they use, but that there are also just people who are interested in making the icons and not at all interested in doing any magic.

I also thought that it was very cool to read from Liliath’s point of view. Liliath is the titular ‘Angel Mage’ – she seems to have much more power than any other mage. She is presented as the main villain, but it is kind of unclear why she is doing the things that she’s doing. That kept me intrigued, and trying to figure out what was going on. I like seeing the same situation from both the hero and villain perspective too.

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What didn’t quite work for me:

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One of the most important things in a novel (well, in my opinion) aside from the plot is the characters. This book has quite a cast of characters, which normally isn’t an issue for me. In this case, it just felt to me that the characters were not very well fleshed out. I loved the main four characters (Simeon, Henri, Dorotea, and Agnez) and I loved their interactions and different personalities. I just wanted more!! It never felts like we got to know each character past a surface level, which is unfortunate. It makes it hard to connect with the characters in any way.

Even though I mentioned liking Liliath’s point of view, she was still not a very well-developed character so I still wished for more of that.

Overall, the pacing just really didn’t work for me either – most of the book was quite slow. I felt that things didn’t really pick up until the last 100 pages. Which, in a novel this long, is quiiiite late. It felt like almost the whole novel was description and setup. I did enjoy that, but it made the novel suffer in the sense that the feeling of urgency and conflict was lost. The plot seemed kind of buried, which is unfortunate.

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Regardless, I still love Garth Nix and I will always love his writing. I think this book was a really neat concept that just didn’t quite hit the mark.

Have you read Angel Mage? If so, what did you think? If not, have you read any other Garth Nix? I highly recommend that you do if your answer was no 🙂