I admit it took me awhile to get through this. It was an interesting read with an intriguing conflict and premise, but the intricacies were hard to follow and nearly tedious at times. To keep names straight in the beginning, when each character uses at least four different names and titles, was nearly impossible. Various terms for the land and certain types of gossamers were also hard to keep track of. I think that was why it took me so long to finally push myself to finish. The author was thorough and very detailed, which I hate to complain about, but it was so much so that it weighed down the plot heavily and made it confusing, difficult to decipher, and slow. But I do want to applaud the thorough worldbuilding, magic system, and huge group of three dimensional characters.

This is one of those reads where the plot is interesting it just took way too long for me to understand it.

“The Gossamer’s Mage” reads like a lost fairy tale or Greek myth with young men who possess magic gifted by the goddess find that the price of said magic is their youth but when a young mage is found to be creating monsters the journey begins to put an end to the threat only to learn that it hides closer to home.

This book was a struggle to jump into and there was more than one moment in the first quarter of the book where I wanted to quit because I couldn’t figure out what was happening. There’s a lot of shifting povs in this book, which has around 6 chapter total, which makes it more difficult to keep track of the characters and the plot to the point that I thought it might have been an anthology between chapters 1 & 2 only to slowly see how it was all weaving together.

Once getting out of that rough patch it actually became fascinating but at that point I was too far into the book for that to save my opinion of it. I enjoyed parts of the resolution but it wrapped up way too quickly, just when the climax was amping up I blinked and it was over and though the ending wasn’t bad it just seemed like we could have taken out parts in the middle to give us room at the end for it to breathe.

This is a book I’m going to keep flip flopping on in terms of how I feel about it but overall it’s just okay.

**special thanks to the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review**

Summary:

The world’s only remaining magic is in Tananen, where only women can speak the Deathless Godess’ language, and only men can write her spells – both at a terrible cost. But now something dangerous and dark has come into Tiler’s Hold, destroying magic creations, and silencing the Goddess.

Review:

Julie Czerneda’s been one of my favorite authors for years. Yet I haven’t been excited by her recent books. Have my tastes changed? Has her writing? Have her editors given her too much leeway? The Gossamer Mage doesn’t answer that question, but it also doesn’t go against the trend.

Czerneda made her name in part by writing credible SF. Writing fantasy isn’t new to her, though somehow with the press of work, etc., I haven’t actually gotten around to reading her two prior fantasy books. Czerneda has imagination and skill, and, the fantastic elements of the book work. The world is interesting, fairly original, satisfyingly magical, etc.

Where the book falls through is mostly in the mechanics. We switch from character to character, but most of them start at the same place and deal with similar issues, and I often found it hard to remember which was which. In theory, the three lead characters all have clear and distinct roles, but I found their voices very similar.

There are interludes that are mean to break up the text and give us some outside perspective and worldbuilding information, but I found them both repetitive and too vague to be useful. There just wasn’t enough context overall for me to build up a clear hypothesis about what was happening and why – often key to this kind of ‘mysterious origins’ story.

The ending exacerbates the problem. It ties things up emotionally, but it doesn’t really try to explain what’s been happening or how it all came about. There are loads of hints, but they lead to … nothing in particular. I don’t think it’s because I missed subtlety and nuance; it’s because Czerneda had a chance to explain, and simply decided not to. The result is intensely dissatisfying. This is where a more demanding editor could have come into play, which is at least the second time I’ve said that recently about a Czerneda book. It’s disappointing, not least because this could have been a satisfying book – all the pieces are there. And it should have been one.

Sometime soon, I’ll go back to actually read the Night’s Edge books, and see whether, 6 years back, those turned out better.