My Review: ⭐️⭐️⭐/ 5 stars

This is a short fantasy novella (about 176 pages) about Fellian, a Lamplighter (fire mage) who has been kept in a life of servitude and was rescued by Monarchist sympathizers to rescue other members that are trapped. There is also a royal child that is born of natural phenomenons/disasters that is being killed and they need to rescue this baby too.

The world building is great, but the story is so short that I could not truly be immersed. This absolutely deserved a full duology at the very least to really explore this world that Elliot created. This reminded me a little of the Grisha books and An Ember in the Ashes series - but without the “oomph” that made those stories so special. Overall, I think it was ok, but didn’t love it.

Thank you to Macmillan/Tor Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Final review: 2.5/5 Stars
When the Liberationists overthrew the monarchy, all mages were rounded up and conscripted into indentured service to the state. Fellian is one such mage, torn from her family five years ago, forced to work as a servant at an inn, cleaning latrines and using her fire gift to light the lamps every night. But one night, Fellian is whisked away by a group of rebel Monarchists who desperately need her fire gift to rescue allies. But all that gets put aside when a catastrophic event reveals that a child of royal blood has been born. It will take a mage from all five domains to rescue the child, and Fellian is the only one they’ve got.

SERVANT MAGE is a novella with a fascinating set-up that is hampered by its execution. The author has a great premise: a mage trapped between two warring factions who simply wants to return to the home she was stolen from years ago. Along the way, she begins to understand both her own powers, and the political powers shaping the world. Fellian is meant to be our POV character; after being conscripted as a young teen, she was kept isolated and uneducated about how magic works so that she would be easier to control, so she’s learning a lot as she experiences freedom for the first time in years.

But the result is a lot of info-dumping that feels rushed and a bit stilted. Some of this can be forgiven at the book’s start as the necessary evil of needing to quickly immerse readers into this world. But exposition of all sorts continues well into the books final act, with Fellian constantly asking questions that her companions point out are rude and awkward, even as they answer the question.

To give credit where it’s due, the book does an excellent job of making the point that both sides of this conflict are the same side of an oppressive coin, a realization that slowly becomes more and more clear until one final impactful moment at the end of the book. Both sides want to create a privileged ruling class, they just differ on who should be allowed in those upper ranks. This lack of a “good” side does make the story a bit bleak overall, which can be a bit jarring if you came to this tale for a rousing adventure where Fellian is rescued by rebels looking to create a better future. The story does end on a hopeful note, but it is much more of a grey tale than you might initially expect.

There’s enough in SERVANT MAGE that I held out hope for a long while that I was going to like it more than I ended up doing. Unfortunately, I had trouble connecting with the characters, particularly lead character Fellian. This feels like a book that would have benefited from being a novel length, with time to explore all these concepts more naturally. As it currently stands, SERVANT MAGE is a premise that fell just short of winning my heart.

[Originally postedon Tor.Com: https://www.tor.com/2022/01/18/book-reviews-servant-mage-by-kate-elliott]

Kate Elliott’s Servant Mage Is a Remarkable Political Drama Slipped Between Interplanar Travel and Dragon Babies

So many fantasy books imagine the downfall of a corrupt, oppressive, monarchist empire. Servant Mage, a slim novella by SFF luminary Kate Elliott, is a book that asks: What then? What happens after the revolution? What happens to the noble class when their system of power falls, when the populace is trapped in the dictatorship of the proletariat in between the past and something better?

Servant Mage follows Fellian, a magician with an affinity for fire and light-magic, as she’s recruited (more like press-ganged) to help guide a rescue team through the caved-in mine. Halfway into the trek across the country, her rebel group receives word of an emergency—a five-souled child has been born, and the baby must be rescued before the Liberationists find and kill her.

What follows is a magical heist story mired in politics, power, and the shape of truth. Fellian comes face to face with the lies that the current Liberationist regime has fed her for years, including the truth about the source of magic in the world. As rebel nobles and near-Marxists battle for cultural supremacy, Fellian struggles to discern right from wrong, swept up in a struggle that is far more complicated and entangled than she had ever assumed.

Fellian is much less an agent of this story and much more a vehicle for Elliott to shape a world that is fantastic, expansive, and worthy of many more pages than the slim 160 that make up this novella. That’s not to say that Fellian doesn’t have character or doesn’t make some choices, but overall the plot happens around her. For a book this size, with a wonderful amount of lore and worldbuilding, propelled by non-stop action, this isn’t a deterrent. Fellian is a smart character, her voice sharp and hopeful, and Elliott uses Fellian’s just-barely-an-outsider status to pry apart the insecurities and cracks that make up the world of Servant Mage.

The book delineates two major political factions: the Liberationists, who are in power at the start of the novel, and the monarchists, who are attempting to find five-souled children in order to help them reclaim their authority. It isn’t easy to figure out which side is better or worse, and it’s clearly intentional. The moves Servant Mage makes in every single conversation, worldbuilding detail, and plot reveal, only serve to muddy the perspectives. It’s brilliantly done, and the immersion into the world is immediate.

In Servant Mage we get a world that is flawed and fractured, but in a way that feels devastatingly real. There is no black and white righteousness. Under the yoke of control, the number of people who suffer are always greater than those who thrive, even as the Liberationists state their goals are to create total social equality. But the dictatorship of the proletariat isn’t quite working. The just-off-real world political ideologies at the core of this book are its lodestone, the grounding point of the plot, deftly couched amid a fantastic turmoil, full of soul-bound elemental wraiths, cows who eat demons, and a tumultuous, mixed-up sense of real history. Here is the core of much political conflict: Us good, them bad.

[Major spoilers follow]

As Fellian moves through this world, one where the Liberationists kept her imprisoned and in an asylum, where she learned only the most basic tenets of her fire-magic and was denied the ability to return home or even purchase her freedom, we make assumptions about the ideologies at work. Fellian keeps her cohort, and the reader, at arms-length, forcing us to examine the assumption that we know what kind of political leanings breed bad judgment. Then, at the end, it’s revealed that Fellian was orphaned by the monarchists; that her family was writing and printing seditious material during the monarchists reign, and as part of their punishment, she was separated from her family and sent to the asylum to be taught as a servant mage. She tells Lord Roake, the monarchist in charge of the rebel group, that she doesn’t want to join the monarchists at all, she just wants to return home.

I don’t typically care for neat little twists at the ends of novels, much less at the ends of novellas, but the more I think about Servant Mage, the more I realize that Elliott has been building every swift-moving plot point up to this exact ending. This is a world where power corrupts, where fear rules over idealism, where sharp, jagged edges pierce through the aether and into the skin of every person who gets caught up in distant power struggles. It’s a twist, but it’s not a surprise. At the end, when Fellian tells the monarchists that they’re just as bad as every other regime, it feels cathartic. It feels right. The self-assured righteousness of the monarchists now seems hollow, suddenly more self-serving than selfless, their noble promises wilting in the wake of an account of a life shattered by their own cause.

In the final scenes, Fellian goes home. Not to the hotel where she had been indentured as a servant mage, but to her hometown, from which she was taken as a child. The final moments of Servant Mage don’t place faith in systems, but in communities, in cultural strongholds, in the roots that can be bent out of shape but never truly broken. Elliott has established a world of opposing political factions and refused to give either of them the validation they crave from people like Fellian, the people they seek to control. Fellian gets to leave, to go home with a deeper understanding of what power means to the people in power, and a knowledge of how to fight against those systems in her own life, in her own community.

With nuance and cleverness, Elliott creates a unique fantasy world that is very different from our own, but mired in the same bigotry, inefficient political machinations, and acceptable collateral-damaged population that we can recognize. The solution that Fellian finds, that she fights for, is the ability to build a community for the people who are forced to live underneath systems of control, to preserve the culture and sophistication of whatever place has survived the pressure of regimes. Fellian gets to start over, and Elliott ends the book with the subtle recognition that hope and trauma are often, indelibly, soul-bound together.

After Fellian's parents were killed by Liberationists, she was forced to be an indentured servant mage. She is a Lamplighter. She can create light.
Five years after she was taken, some Monarchists show up with an offer she can't refuse. Travel papers, money, and freedom if she helps them.

I'm not usually a big fan of novellas, but this one is great. I still wish it was a full length novel, but it is well done. The magic system is great, and I loved the characters. This is my first time reading anything by Kate Elliott, but definitely not my last.

3.5 stars

I’ve got mixed feelings about this novella. While I appreciate the way that the author plays around with common fantasy tropes and reader expectations, I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.

The story takes place in a land in which the monarchy has been overthrown and a new radical government established in its place by the victors, the Liberationists, who are somewhat similar to the republicans of the French Revolution. Under the new regime, mages are placed in indentured servitude by the state as teenagers because their power is believed to be demon-spawned. (Well, unless they are the children of families with power and wealth—the rules are different for them, of course.) Fire mage Fellian suffers through abuse and mistreatment as one of these servant mages until a group of rebel Monarchists rescues her because they need her skills for a mission. She agrees to join them, and they all set off together on the road to adventure.

At this point early in the novella, the way the author is playing with tropes is already obvious—magic users are powerless rather than powerful, a monarchy seems preferable to corrupt republicanism, etc. Still, I had an expectation of how the story would go based on the conventions of the genre. In a typical fantasy novel, members of the assembled band become comrades and friends, and sometimes lovers as well. United, these heroes will do whatever it takes to thwart their evil adversaries.

That’s not what I got, however. I don’t want to give too much away about what does happen, but this is NOT a standard fantasy story. On the plus side, it made me think about how readers expect certain things from the genre, and I liked that the author deliberately subverted those expectations. At the same time, though, the standard fantasy storyline is popular for a reason! It’s very satisfying to be able to root for the good guys to overcome the bad guys in a tale that emphasizes the bonds of friendship and love. Instead, I wound up often feeling thrown off kilter as the plot unfolded, with tropes being introduced and then deliberately undermined by the author.

I might have enjoyed it more if I liked Fellian more as a character, but she got on my nerves a bit. She’s a very prickly person, and she’s got reason to be after what she’s endured. It’s possible to disagree with others without being as combative as Fellian is, though. Also, if people want to establish a connection with you, it’s maybe not a good idea to act dismissive toward their overtures, if only from a purely pragmatic standpoint of not unnecessarily annoying people. I did appreciate Fellian’s motivations in the end, but it was harder to root for her than it should have been.

I guess the best way to sum up my feelings about this novella is that I liked it more as an exercise in storytelling than as an actual story.

A copy of this book was provided through NetGalley for review; all opinions expressed are my own.

When I pick up a Kate Elliott book, I expect to find fascinating world building and complex, interesting characters. I was not disappointed! This world has a sense of Asian xianxia to it, but developed into a typically complex, unique world. She is just so great at world building that the world itself becomes a vital character.

This novella feels like the opening to a new series arc. The first half is so dynamic I could not put it down as Fellian, our POV, escapes prison and discovers a quest, as well as the bigger picture in a troubled land. We encounter a lot of fascinating characters, including an infant whose being opens up yet another trapdoor.

The second half felt a bit compressed, as if a much longer novel was cut down, leaving a lot of questions. Dangling threads.

Left me wanting more!

Servant Mage is a new fantasy novella by Kate Elliott releasing on January 18, 2022. I was luckily approved for an Advanced Reading Copy of this book by Macmillan/Tor-Forge and their imprint Tordotcom in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Tor-Forge!

Servant Mage takes place in a richly crafted world of magic and intrigue, and it follows a servant mage of fire, called a Lamplighter, named Fellion. The world Fellion lives in is a very harsh one. The overthrow of the Monarchists by the Liberationists over 30 years ago changed the fate of mages everywhere. Rather than being properly trained and honored guild members in the caste-system under the Monarchy, mages are viewed as demon-possessed beings useful for nothing more than indentured servitude. They are only taught the basics of their powers in order to serve others.

When Fellion is rescued from such servitude by a group of rebel Monarchists, she seizes the chance to quickly fulfill the task they set her in exchange for money and a way back to her home. Unfortunately, this task gets derailed when a potential heir to the Monarchy is discovered. The group of Monarchist mages must rescue the newborn before it is killed by the leader of the Liberationists, and Fellion is quickly embroiled in a battle she neither fully understands nor fully endorses.

All of these events and the explanations of the magic system which focuses on the five elements – earth, fire, water, air, and aether – are beautifully woven into the narrative. Kate Elliott reveals enough about how the world works at a steady pace to help readers make sense of the information without becoming overwhelmed. The well-paced revelations leave the reader wanting to know more about this world, the characters, and the hidden conflicts of the world without relying on info dumps.

Ultimately, though, this story is about Fellion rediscovering her voice in a world that would force her to choose a side to speak for her. Fellion was chosen by the rebel Monarchist’s leader based on a cursory glance at her history in official records, but he doesn’t really know Fellion. She is a means to an end for him, and he pities her lack of status that he feels she deserves. However, he never stops to question what Fellion wants.

The behavior of the Monarchists and their insistence on everyone being in their proper place and afforded the respect, or lack thereof, of their classes raises the question of why the Monarchy was overthrown to begin with. What led to the Liberationists feeling like they could create a better world? This a question that Fellion slowly ponders over the course of the story, and she finally answers it for herself in the end, which is hopeful and satisfying.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novella, and I would love to learn that it has a sequel planned. This slim volume manages to take on such complex ideas, such as how non-conformation is a valid choice that can lead to a viable future. It only takes one person to reject the status quo and start a new movement towards a possibly better world by addressing underlying problems of the old one. All of this is wrapped up in a beautiful, rich fantasy story about those with and in power and those without power and the relationship between them all.

I gave Servant Mage four out of five stars. Servant Mage was a quick, exciting, and enjoyable read that managed to build a fascinating world with complex problems and characters. I would love to see it fleshed out into a full-length novel. In fact, the only negative about the story is that it tried to pack so much into such a small space. It could definitely be expanded upon in places, but it was still understandable and paced well. Regardless, I can’t wait to read more from Kate Elliott in the future.

This novella has such an interesting premise and the world-building is fantastic and very impressive. However, the story itself didn't wow me and it was a bit of a struggle at times to stay interested in it. I do think that maybe if it were a bit longer there would have been more of a chance to get invested and see more of the characters and their backgrounds/motivations.

Fellian is okay as the main character but she did feel kind of impersonal and I never really properly connected to her. Some of the side characters were very compelling though and again the world is absolutely fascinating.

I didn't love this as much as I expected but it was pretty enjoyable and I'm glad I read it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this for an honest review.

TITLE: Servant Mage
AUTHOR: Kate Elliot
176 pages, TorDotCom Publishing, ISBN 9781250769053 (hardcover, also available in e-book)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads): In Kate Elliott's Servant Mage, a lowly fire mage finds herself entangled in an empire-spanning conspiracy on her way to discovering her true power.

They choose their laws to secure their power.

Fellian is a Lamplighter, able to provide illumination through magic. A group of rebel Monarchists free her from indentured servitude and take her on a journey to rescue trapped compatriots from an underground complex of mines.

Along the way they get caught up in a conspiracy to kill the latest royal child and wipe out the Monarchist movement for good.

But Fellian has more than just her Lamplighting skills up her sleeve…

MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: With Servant Mage, Kate Elliot proves that it is possible to write epic fantasy without writing a doorstop of a novel and still leave the reader both satisfied and wanting more. It’s probably a bit early to start making claims about “favorite novella of the year,” but I will be surprised if Servant Mage isn’t in the Top Five for me at least. That’s how intrigued I am with this world and these characters.

In this world, Liberationists “freed” the world of the Monarchy long enough ago that older people remember the way life used to be but there’s a generation coming of age who have been raised to believe what the Liberation government tells this is true: that the Monarchy were possessed by multiple demons that made them powerful but debauched, and so anyone who is deemed to have magical talent is relegated to a strictly controlled and demeaned servant class. Mages may be talented in one of five areas (earth, air, fire, water, and aether) and are trained from discovery in exactly how their powers work.

Fellian is one of those servant mages, a lamplighter (“fire”). She’s been told that she’ll only ever have the ability to create illumination, and that even if she ever manages to work her way free from her indentured servitude (a system which is designed to perpetuate indenture, not relieve it), she won’t rise very far because she’s still demon-possessed and not one of the Virtuous. At the start of the novel, we see that even in servitude, Fellian pushes boundaries: she’s learned to detect heat signatures, an ability she theoretically can’t have, according to the Liberationists; she also takes time to secretly teach other servants how to read and write, something else the Liberationists have outlawed for servant mages and, it seems, for most of the population outside of the elite.

In just the opening chapter, we see how both feisty and insecure Fellian is, and that internal struggle continues throughout the book. Even when presented with new information about the way the world or magic works, information she can see is true, her training/education still holds sway – and in at least one crucial moment, that training threatens to unravel everything the group she’s with has accomplished. Fellian also remains unafraid to call people out when she thinks they’re hiding something from her, unafraid to ask awkward questions at inopportune moments. Her guesses about people’s motives aren’t always correct, but they always get a reaction.

Servant Mage is in third person but very tightly focused on Fellian’s point of view: the reader knows what she knows in terms of what she’s experienced and been raised to believe and learns what she learns of the other characters through her questions and their answers/reactions. The rest of the cast is as intriguing as Fellian: Shey the apparent nobleman of the group; Hallou the fellow servant mage who struggles just as much as Fellian with breaking free of training; Inre the mysterious; and the battle-hardened older Captain who leads them. I enjoyed learning about each characters’ past, reveals I will not spoil in a review, and suspect there’s even more to their histories than was revealed.

The world-building that underlies the action is equally as interesting as the characters that live in the world. We’re accustomed to fantasy stories where the Monarchy is evil (especially when they’re equated with Dragons, as the Monarchy herein is) and whoever fights against the Monarchy is good. In our real world, we’re all too acquainted with revolutions that end up installing regimes who are just as bad, if not worse, than the monarchs they depose. Elliott gives us a clear look at that here, with the Liberationist government being abusive and controlling, stripping away rights from anyone with even a hint of magical ability and hoarding wealth and power to a small non-magical “elite.”

Hopefully, Servant Mage is just the start of exploring this world. I look forward to more.

I received an electronic advance reading copy from the publisher via NetGalley in hopes of an honest review.

Servant Mage is an epic fantasy story condensed into a standalone novella, proving that you don’t need a heavy tome to have a unique world and magic system, political intrigue, a (mostly) engaging plot, and a diverse cast of characters. Unfortunately, the length of this story was its biggest weakness for me.

Fellian is a fire mage. There are mages for the five elements: fire, earth, air, water, and aether. She’s an indentured servant, only taught the most basic magical abilities to be able to do her job, when one day a group of mages breaks her out of her prison to steal her away on a mission.

There are two groups fighting a war in the land, the Liberationists and the Monarchists, but I never felt like I fully grasped what either side was fighting for or what they believed. I only knew that they were enemies.

One of this book’s downfalls is that there’s very little character development, especially for such a big cast of characters in such a short book. I constantly was confused about who was who and who was related to who, and we really only get any in-depth info about Fellian, and even then it’s limited.

I found the first fifty percent of the novella to be engaging and interesting, but something happened around the halfway mark because the latter fifty percent was lackluster and messy as I wasn’t sure where the plot was going and I had sadly stopped caring about any element of the story.

Servant Mage is very fast-paced and quick to the point. I think this is a good story if you are new to epic fantasy and want to get a feel for the genre and read about magic and political intrigue and war and adventure but are intimidated by the usual 500+ page books. However, I think seasoned fantasy readers will find something lacking here as the story is very surface-level and isn’t very memorable in the end.

Also I think the cover is very misleading because there aren’t any dragons in the story, and the dragon is what initially had me picking up the book.

Overall, this novella was fine but nothing special. Novellas normally don’t work for me because I always want more than they offer, and that seems to be the case here as well. Servant Mage would definitely benefit from being longer and having a more developed plot and more in-depth characters. When I finished the story I was left with a feeling of “well, what was even the point of that?” and you should never feel that way about a book. I wish I had more positive thoughts about this story but it unfortunately let me down.

ARC acquired by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It pains me to give this novella a two-star rating. The world building and characters were so intriguing, and I was immediately immersed in the story. Unfortunately, the execution missed the mark for me. Fellion is a Lamplighter forced into indentured servitude because of her abilities. Right away, we get to see how she defies the rules of the society she lives in by teaching people how to read. I loved this aspect of Fellion’s character. However, I still don’t fully understand what a Lamplighter is/does. From my feeble understanding, she can create light in the palm of her hand and act as a guide in the dark. Correct me if I am wrong, please. Fellion is recruited by a Monarchist who wants to help save a group of individuals who are trapped in a mine. Somehow Fellion is the only Lamplighter that can help with this. Along the way, they stumble upon a conspiracy by the Liberationists to murder the latest royal baby (who happens to be a dragon?).

If this had been a full-length novel with a fleshed out magic system and world building, this could have easily been four stars. However, with how much unexplained jargon is thrown out at once with little to now explanation, just makes for a confusing read. The magic system is too big and complex for such a short story. I didn’t get to spend enough time with the characters to care what happened to them. The pacing was also rushed with too many events happening back to back.

Overall, while the magic system was highly intriguing, this story just didn’t hit the mark for me. I’ll definitely check out more books by Kate Elliott in the future, and hope that she expands this universe and continues Fellion’s story.

New York Times Bestselling author Kate Elliott brings us another wonderful fantasy novel filled with rich world-building and a vibrant female main character we can love. Servant Mage is filled with twists and turns, drama, and conspiracy. With stunning cover art and a captivating tale, what’s not to love?

After watching her parents executed for sedition, Fellian is taken from her family and sent to an asylum to be trained as a servant mage, forced into slavery because of her ability to create Lamps with magic. Years later, while indentured to an inn, she is stolen by a group of rebel Monarchists who believe her seditionist background puts her firmly on their side against the Liberationists who currently rule.

They promise coin for her aid rescuing refugees trapped in the dark of the mines up north. If they survive this mission, they swear she will walk away with money and the freedom to go wherever she wishes without interference. Knowing they face certain death if they’re caught, Fellian also asks for a travel license and identity papers. Their destination brings her close to home, and she dares to hope she can return and find her grandmother still alive.

Her captors are not only Monarchists, but they are each a branch of the outlawed five-arrow quiver: air, earth, water, and aether, and now they had her fire. Combined together they could locate dragon-born children, the bane of the Liberationists. When an earthquake announces the birth of such a child, the group’s priorities change, and Fellian gets pulled even deeper into political intrigue and danger as their path turns away from the north and home, and toward the unknown.

Through it all, Fellian remains strong willed and outspoken, sticking up for herself and those she cares about, asking questions, and refusing to be cowed. Everyone makes assumptions about her based on her clothing, her looks, and her background, but they never ask what she wants or how she feels, and she keeps her motivations close, always ready to save herself, always weighing her options. She’s an excellent role model. I can’t wait to see what she does next; assuming there are future books.

3.5 stars

Servant Mage follows the lamplighter Fellian who is rescued from her service as a flame mage to a domineering empire by a secret rebellion. She is then dragged into a rescue mission for the lost heir to the monarchy.

I didn’t realise this was a novella when I started but it turned out to be very short and sweet! I enjoyed the world building and getting to know the characters however did feel it ultimately lacked depth by nature of its length. I would have liked more details about what was a very interesting world but sometimes felt like things were missing or you were already expected to know them.

The magic of the world was cool, an elemental system (which I always love) which can team up into groups of different elements to create a more pronounced effect. I also enjoyed Kate Elliot’s prose, it is very easy to read while being subtly beautiful. I also thought some elements of the atmosphere were excellent. In particular there is a scene where they enter a ghost/death dimension which was so spooky and awesome!

Fellian as a main character was perfectly likeable but nothing about her stood out to me as special. I also enjoyed the side characters but again whilst they were likeable to read from I did not get especially attached to any of them.

I thought this novella brought up some interesting themes of belonging and finding your place in an empire that is very hostile and controlling towards mages. Additionally the lengths and sacrifices people are willing to go to make a better future for themselves and their families people.

In conclusion this was an enjoyable novella to read, if a little forgettable.

I usually love fantasy standalones when they were well-executed but I think this could have done more being a first in a series.

The magic system wasn’t the most intriguing to me because it was mostly just elemental magic so it pulled me out of the story a lot and i feel like it wasn’t as utilized as it could have been. But the action scenes were well-imagined and tense, which i find enjoyable. The characters were not as well established as I would have liked since it was so short but i did appreciate the society-normalized queerness present throughout the story.

It’s a short but fast-paced high fantasy standalone that read more like an action-packed side story that expands to something bigger but whether that’s good or bad is ultimately up to you.

*ARC received from the publisher -Macmillan/Tor- for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.*

— 3.0 —

I received an ARC from the publisher and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
This is a novella that captures some of the epic, expansive feel that readers come to fantasy for, while not being a massive tome. While it does feel a tad condensed in my opinion, I still appreciate that Kate Elliott was able to pack so much into this novella. The world is interesting, and one I’d absolutely love more from. Fellian is an interesting character to follow, and I found the story more or less an engaging one. This is a great taster for someone like me who’s new to Elliott’s work, or to the fantasy genre.

Ahoy there me mateys!  No one is sadder than I am that this book walks the plank.  I love Kate Elliott's work and was excited to read this.  However, for such a short book, I really struggled to engage with it.  The book started out interestingly with a servant, Fellion, being in indentured bondage because of her magical abilities.  I enjoyed the take on elemental magic.  I was very intrigued by Fellion secretly teaching people to read.  Unfortunately the promising setup quickly disappeared.

Fellion is reluctantly drawn into a quest with a group of rebels at which point her intelligence and feisty attitude vanish.  I wasn't thrilled about the original quest but was even less happy with the dramatic and abrupt diversion of the plot to a rescue mission.  The politics became too complicated.  The characters were unlikeable.  And there were just too many unanswered questions.  The book also had some odd sounding dialogue and a horrible ending.

Ultimately, this felt like a poor rough draft or outline for a longer novel.  I wanted better.  Arrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you Tor.com!

Kate Elliot makes a valiant effort to craft a faced paced story about a fantasy world on the brink of revolution but it ultimately falls flat.

The first half of the book was pretty good. It had good pacing that was balanced well with worldbuilding, with Fellian starting to unravel the lies she was taught during her training. I thought the characters were likeable while Fellian took care to maintain some distance between her and the rebels because she wasn't immediately convinced of their cause. I found this aspect to her character very interesting as the reluctance isn't something often seen in protagonists of this sort of story. It added unexpected depth to her character in a very efficient way that fit the story well.

It's only after the halfway mark that the book took a turn for the worse as the pace picks up and rushes through to an ambiguous ending. This next paragraph will contain spoilers for the second half of the book so this is your warning to skip to the end.

When they rescue the child, the group escapes through a demon dimension that was entirely out of place since it only created more unanswered questions and emerges into a manor with such a rigid class structure it put me off from the rebel cause entirely. Up to this point, we've spent time with a group that sees no class distinction and to have that all change was off-putting to say the least. Even when Fellian leaves to find her family in the hopes of her town gaining independence at some point, there's no epilogue to tie up those loose ends. Instead we're left with a maybe.
On top of that, where I thought rescuing the child was going to become the single quest she would go one, she still has to go rescue the people in the cave which only further added to the feeling that the book had too much going on.

I think Kate Elliot raised some very interesting questions concerning types of government, propaganda, child indoctrination and trauma but didn’t give the book the length it deserved to answer those questions.

There were so many things I enjoyed about this short fantasy novel: the stunning cover illustration, the confident and unique world building, the resilient heroine, the mysterious magic system, and the high stakes plot which unfolded at breakneck speed. I read it in a single day, fully immersed in the world. There were fire mages and dragons and rebels and hints of potential budding romance … honestly, it checks all my boxes!

However, because I loved so much about this book, my main issue was all the more disappointing: I didn’t feel I had nearly enough time with the story. There were many complex ideas and so much promising setup for a longer novel or even a whole series! I also found that the action-packed plot felt a little too quick at times, which meant that moments that should have been deeply affecting didn’t resonate as strongly as they could have.

So, while I very much enjoyed the time I spent with this book, I was ultimately left wanting more (which I suppose is both a good and a bad thing). I’m interested in checking out more of Kate Elliott’s work, as I did feel captivated by her writing, but I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed that this is a standalone.

3.5 stars

Thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

First I’ll start out with what I liked about this book. In this world people use elemental magic. But this elemental magic is done in a way I had never seen before. The main character, Fellion, is a fire mage and therefore she can create lanterns and detect heat. I thought this was so cool! I think this book had the potential to create a magic and immersive world.
Sadly for me, this book did not work. I had a hard time connecting to the characters and because of this, I couldn’t tell one character from another. You get a lot of information in a very short amount of time so it was way to much to take it. Unfortunately I did not click with the writing. There was too much description and my brain had a hard time deciphering what was happening in the plot because of this.
Overall, for me this book fell flat. I went in with high hopes but my expectations were not met.
Thank you to the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Kate Elliot has a lot of works available. I read my first Kate Elliot book a few years ago and it was an epic tale spanning 50 years. To go from that to a novella length book from her to the Servant Mage was a huge shift. I think novellas are one of the hardest things an author can do in a fantasy world unless there is also a series in that world to go along with it. Fantasy usually has enough worldbuilding that you need more pages to really develop the story for the normal fantasy reader. While I think Servant Mage should have been a longer story, I like what the author was trying to accomplish with this story.

Fellion is a slave, she is considered a danger because she is able to do some magic. She has basically been sold into indentured servitude because her parents were considered dangerous people. When someone shows up and offers her a choice to leave with them and possibly make it back to the home she was taken from, when their task is complete, it is an offer she can't refuse.

Fellion and a set of four other mages are headed on a mission to save some people, along the way they are diverted by a rare occurrence of of a royal baby being found. If they don't get there first, the child will be found and killed by those who do not want the Monarchists to return to power. All in the group volunteer to divert the mission to try and save the child.

Servant Mage has an interesting magic system and world set up. Kate Elliot toyed with a few fantasy tropes and had an unexpected ending to the story. That said, I honestly wished it was fleshed out just a little more as a full length novel to really dig deeper into the history, politics and characters. There just seemed like there was so much potential for the story and this world, I was surprised this was a stand alone. I usually feel this way with fantasy novellas though, it is really hard to get all the information and character development I like in stories in under 200 pages.