Great book. I loved it- Such a great world the author built. It was a fun, interesting read with a lot going on. I loved the main character and can't wait to dive into the next installment.

Fantastic read, I could not put it down. Worth the read. Bring on more from this author as I will be keen.

A great start to a new series. I loved the world building, as Raine traveled the reader wasn’t left out of getting a feel for her new surroundings. I also liked that we were given a good amount of backstory to the characters, without losing all mystery. Everyone is layered and there is still so much more to learn. I also liked how involved the Gods are, and that there are beings even older than them. So there is sort of a system of checks and balances, making no one so powerful they can’t be brought down a peg or two.

What I didn’t like was Raine ignoring warnings. When she first arrived in Tandara it made sense. It was an accidental kidnapping and she thought she lost her mind. But once she realized it was real and the dangers she faced, a bit more caution and thought would’ve been nice. But that is an issue I’ve noticed with a lot of lead characters thrown into a new and magical or supernatural environment. The need to argue or prove their point seems to outweigh common sense and asking questions before acting. Overall I really enjoyed the book and I can not wait for the next installment.

Alexandra Rushe has started a series with a Meddle of Wizards about Raine, a young woman with a deadly brain tumor who is enveigled through a mirror into a world where magic is normal and she is a wizard. Along with her comes her ghost companion Mimsie. She is entangled with the adventures of a troll and other supernatural creatures. Will she survive? Will she thrive?

This was a solid start/first book in this series. I read the description but it wasn't really what I was expecting when I started reading it. It had almost a young adult feel to it, though the characters are all older (the h is 25 I believe, and the other characters, well lets just say none of them are young). It had vibes of LoTR and even Harry Potter at times, but with lighter moments with humor thrown in. Its a great book for all ages, IMO. I really liked all the characters and the world building, and I am looking forward to the future books.

I have always been a fan of collective fantasy stories. Rushe has a developed a wonderful mixture of supernatural species and magical humans enlisted to save mankind and supernaturals alike.

Raine Stewart is a woman who has spent her life ailing from a mystery illness. Once cared for by her Aunt, she is now alone and dying. A man appears in her mirror and she is sure that she is suffering from a brain tumor. She can also see her ghostly Aunt Mimsie, who passed away years ago, which also leads her to believe that she is having hallucinations because of said brain tumor. But, that isn't the case, when the mirror man appears in front of her and has a very real hand grasping her arm and wants to drag her to another world, she still doesn't believe him, and he tugs her through a portal to Tandara.

Raine soon discovers that she is needed to defeat an evil wizard, and with a band of supernaturals and Viking-like humans they set out on their quest.

This series has so many one-liners and laugh out loud moments. I found it witty, amusing, and tender. Like many other quest stories, they acquire characters as they go along, some temporary, some not.

I liked Rushe's mix of mythology and unusual supernaturals.

While the pace was a bit slow in places, the action scenes were well thought out and vivid. The pacing is just the nature of establishing a new world and series.

I thoroughly enjoyed the main characters and the humor was great fun. Raine's gradual grasp of this new world, her raw magical talent, and the gifts of the individuals in the group are cleverly revealed and are the strength of the novel's world building.

I do look forward to the next book in this Fledgling Magic series.

I received this ARC from NetGalley, with no understanding as to my review.

While enjoyable and fun, A MEDDLE OF WIZARDS had its issues. At times it felt derivative and overly complicated, like the author was trying a little too hard to make it Serious Fantasy. Still, I liked reading it, and I am curious about the next book in the series.

What I think was done best in A MEDDLE OF WIZARDS were the characters. Raine, Gertie, Bree and Mauric were all interesting, with complex backstories and layers to their personalities. For being pulled into a situation/world she didn't know existed, Raine does an excellent job of coping and I liked her for her fearlessness, while also remaining realistic - she missed warm baths and modern conveniences like I think anybody would!

There were scenes that felt a lot like other fantasy books, however - like when Raine was shopping for her wizard's stone, it felt like I was reading the wand scene from Harry Potter. And there were times when the world building felt like there were plot points being thrown in to make things a bit more complicated. The names were slightly ridiculous and I expected the whole thing to be slightly more light-hearted and humorous than it was. Not that it wasn't funny at times, but it just wasn't what I was expecting.

Overall, A MEDDLE OF WIZARDS is a fairly good opening salvo for the Fledgling Magic series, and I know that I'll be picking up the next volume when it comes out.

This was a fantastic book filled with exciting world-building, amusing characters, and a promise of amazing adventures to come! I sped through this book in a day, eager to read more about all the quirky parts to this fictional world and see where it took our heroine. While I would have liked to have seen some romance (because admittedly, I fully expected there to at least be a little), there was none to be had. BUT given how the book progressed, I have high hopes that at some point in the future Alexandra Rushe will satisfy my craving for a little romance. Pretty please?

Raine Stewart has been flung into a land where gruff trolls, alpha warriors, ancient wizards, and sensitive giants wander. Told she has an evil twin (no joke) that is aiding an evil wizard in trying to take over Tandara - the world where she now finds herself - she is now her new friends' only hope of taking back their home. As she travels, she notices that the disease that plagued her in her world has gradually begun to slip away in Tandara, and where before she was thin, homely, and in pain, now she is healthy, beautiful, and pain-free. Perhaps this is really where she belongs, if only she can survive long enough to see her happy ending.

My favorite part for me in this book really wasn't Raine, even though I loved her to pieces. She had lines that made me laugh so hard, and the way she described the warrior Mauric was hysterical:

"Lord a-mercy he was huge, one of the biggest men she'd seen--well over six feet tall and packed with muscles. He was a college football recruiter's wet dream, a goal line stand by himself."

Aside from her, starting with my most liked, the author gives us the lovable Tiny Bart, a giant with a heart to match his height, Mauric, a manly warrior who has no idea what to do with sickly Raine, Gertie, a troll sorceress with a terrifying exterior but a gruff motherly interior, and Bree, an ancient wizard who can't see what's right in front of his nose. All of these characters really made this story leap off the pages. There are many more characters, but these are the four that make up Raine's crew for majority of the book. These are the ones that will get you to continue reading and wish the book never ended.

I can't wait for the next book in this series! It's sure to be a wonderful adventure, with hopefully a touch of romance to spice things up.

DNF at 60%
This book wasn't bad, In fact, I'd give it a 3.5 stars, I myself just couldn't connect with Raine. The plot was intriguing and I went in expecting a percy jacksonish adventure but for adults (based on description), but I felt the writing was far too elementary for the age of the characters and plot which was developed nicely, just not written well. For me that's big. I can't lose myself and connect with characters and plot that don't speak to the severity of the situation with proper language. You, however, dear friends, may feel differently. My discontent may come from reading an extremely well-written favorite prior to reading this. Had I read it at another time, I may have been able to finish it. I'd definitely give it a try if you enjoy reading about fantastical creatures and a smart heroine.

I have a deep fondness for portal fantasies, since I read a ton of them as a teen in the 90s, so this had a lot of nostalgia for me. I'm not sure the cover is a good match for the book, though. The cover made me think this would be a romantic fantasy novel, like Amanda Bouchet's Kingmaker Chronicles. Instead, it's a quirky sort of epic fantasy, with pretty much nonexistent romance, and reminds me most of my memories of reading Piers Anthony's Xanth books as a teen. It has its own sort of fun, but if you're going into it expecting a romantic undertone, like I was, you're going to be disappointed.

The book is mostly told from Raine's perspective, in the third person, though occasionally it switches to another character. I disliked these parts, because I felt like it was taking me away from Raine's story, and just piled on confusion. The first few chapters of the book were rough reading, as there are a lot of characters, place names, and Gods, some with multiple nicknames. The pacing also had a couple of really slow spots, and I felt like the switching POVs hurt that as well. At one point, we spend a couple chapters with Queen Balzora of Tannenbol for no particular reason I could discern, as there wasn't anything that happened that the characters didn't go back to Raine and explain later.

I just never really connected with Raine. She goes from super sick (to the point of dying) to absolutely stunning gorgeous and powerful in the course of a few weeks. Of course, there is an explanation for why she's been so sickly all her life (and it was obvious from the beginning), but it still seemed like she recovered much too quickly. I did like that, even though she was ridiculously powerful, she had no control over it, and caused a lot of accidental destruction. She had a couple of annoying TSTL moments ("oh, I'm hearing a weird voice in my head, maybe I should tell one of the super powerful and knowledgeable wizards over there? Ooooor, I know, I could just wander off into the creepy forest!") that didn't endear her to me either. I honestly felt closer to some of the other characters than I did to her. I especially liked Gertie, the troll.

“If they kill me, throw yourself out of the tree and hope you break your neck. You don’t want to be alive when they start to eat you.”

And that leads in to my favorite part of this book - the world building. To start off, there's a gorgeous map at the front of the book, and that should clue you in that this'll be one of those lovely long journey books a la Fellowship of the Ring. Each of the various countries is under the auspices of a certain god, and as the book progresses, we learn more about the inhabitants of each land and some of their stories. Some of my favorite parts of the book were Gertie's stories about the founders of two of those countries. Also, I absolutely adored Gertie and the whole troll culture. The fantastical creatures - from trolls to frost giants to the various types of "goggins" - were all fascinating and very well done. In terms of building characters, the book was wonderful - it was just getting the characters to feel like real people that I cared about that I felt the book struggled with.

There's definitely more of a young adult feel to this than epic fantasy. For one thing, there's a lot of silliness. Some of it is truly funny, and some of it struck me as just over the top. A "wizard who set his farts on fire" joke? A wizard who turns himself into a bird and then poops on an annoying character's head? There's even a joke about - I cannot believe I'm typing this out - a "jigglestick." The characters also have the habit of talking in Ye Olde English, aka Fantasy English, which is a pet peeve of mine.

Overall, I think this book was just not my cup of tea. If you're on the lookout for a quirky fantasy with fantastic world building, however, this may be the book for you!

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A fantasy masterpiece

I loved this book. It’s a great story. The world building is excellent as is character development. The scenes are excellently described and the action is well paced. It is everything I want in a fantasy story. There is even some clever banter between characters. The creatures that Alexandra Rushe created are fascinating. I strongly recommend this book for fans of the genre.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book via Netgalley for review purposes.

A Meddle of Wizards by Alexandra Rushe is the beginning of a new fantasy series, Fledgling Magic. The story is mostly told by the main character Raine’s point of view but there are a few instances that it moves over to others in the story.

Raine is living on our world as we know it alone and fighting constant illness when she thinks she is beginning to hallucinate. Instead of hallucinations though a man pops out through her mirror and brings her into a totally new world full of wizards, trolls, giants and many other things.

Raine finds out that she is actually from this world but was hidden away in Alabama to keep her safe from an evil dark wizard. She teams up with the group that has brought her into her world to set out to defeat the wizard and finds new dangers around every corner as they travel across this new world from land to land.

This story is one that for the most part I enjoyed and found was quite a nice start to this new series. I did have a couple of complaints with this first book though when all was said and done. First I found that I didn’t really like the times the story would switch over to other characters instead of just sticking with Raine’s group and building the tale from there. There are a lot of new characters and elements in this fantasy as it is to learn about so these odd chapters just didn’t flow well to me.

I would also say that this one seemed to occasionally get a bit on the slow side to me. For the most part of the book it moved from one scene to the next at a decent pace but then occasionally I’d wonder why it wasn’t moving on or focusing on certain things which also goes back to what I mentioned with the flow of the story by switching POVs too. In the end though I’d be interested in seeing what the author does with the next book as this one held a lot of good things and the story felt as if it were just starting.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

A Meddle of Wizards is both an epic fantasy and a comic paean to the classics of the genre. The main plot is familiar: a heroine with heretofore unsuspected magical talent is transported to another universe, where she must battle the dark wizard who would harness her power for his own enrichment at great cost to the other species inhabiting this alternate world. A secondary pleasure in the reading lies in discovering subtle references to master works. To avoid spoilers, I'll only mention looking glasses and evil twins.

Everything a fan could ask for is a part of this fast-paced book. Enjoy battles, chases, narrow escapes, healing, prophecy, grotesque creatures, and gore. The story closes with the promise of more adventure and the hope that good will overcome evil in the end.

This book goes on my list of recommendations for nieces and nephews who loved Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia (and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies), but whose modern attention spans aren't quite up to The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Let me see where to start , I loved the story, loved most of the characters, it was a great story, kinda stalled in a place or two but nothing that required me to scan any pages.

So, now that I got the fact out of the way that I really did enjoy the story, let us look at things I was not fond of :

The heroine: She was all over the place, sometimes she was really heroic, other times she was borderline TSTL and her mental jumps at times left me with in serious WTF moments. This is explained a bit in the story by reminding readers that she has pretty much been a shut-in all her life so her social skills kinda such so we can give her a pass. It still broke my flow of the story at times with her thoughts or actions.

That is about it, pretty much loved all the rest although I was left wanting more in this story that had the slightest Tolkien tinge to the story when I reached the end and realized this was going to be a trilogy at the least unless I missed something but I look forward to the next story and hope she masters a few of her "gifts" by then since the "Fledgling Magic" part of this seemed to move rather slowly except at rare times of great stress.

Bottom Line: A great story for a book 1 and it did not leave me with a cliff hanger like many such books do, other than the seemingly mental lapses of the heroine it was all enjoyable. 4 Stars and I feel by the end of this story I will be giving it 5 Stars in the future installments.

This book started out quite well and I thought brilliant it seems very original and I love stories with humour so I was expecting to really love this.For me some thing went wrong the more I got into the book I feel so disappointed I think the writers has a great imagination but as the book went on I became quite disassociated with it and found it hard to keep up.I really hope this is just me and wouldn't want to put others off reading this book it just wasn't for me I'm afraid.I think as I haven't enjoyed the last 2 books I have read I need to stand back and choose my next book carefully, I hope I'm not going to put others off reading this book as it might just be me being a bit of a grinch at the moment.

sorry, i just can't get into this book. I thought it would appeal, it has things I love but in reality I just find the story and characters totally wrong for me. I've given up on it now. Maybe at another time, but right now I find its not one for me.

This book had me mesmerized from the start.  While this is a fantasy book the characters are believable and you find yourself cheering not only the main character on, but others as well.The well-written, fast-paced plot moves from one dilemma to another it's an exhilarating adventure that is great for all ages. I can't wait for the next one in the series