Tag: Speculative Fiction

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2013 Reading Challenge. All my 2013 AWWC reviews can be found here.

Wizard Undercover is the fourth book in the Rogue Agent series by K. E. Mills. You can read my review of the first book in the series, The Accidental Sorcerer, here,  my review of the second book, Witches Incorporated, here. and my review of the third book, Wizard Squared, here. Those reviews cover a lot of my general thoughts on the world building and general background, so I’ll keep this review shorter and focused on the plot of this  book.

In Wizard Undercover, Gerald and his friends are sent in undercover to a royal wedding in another country to uncover a plot to sabotage the event and cause international strife.

This book brought together a lot of the strengths of the first few books. The plot is fun and engaging, with enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested. It is more of a straight out spy story, and is better for it.

While there is still an element of Gerald’s powers saving the day in an entirely unpredictable and convenient way, this is significantly de-emphasised compared to the previous books and indeed the smaller instances serve to advance other plot points.

In this book, Gerald’s inexperience as an agent is his biggest handicap. It is all very well bringing the biggest gun to the party, but if you don’t know who to shoot you are still rendered somewhat ineffective. Wizard Undercover treads that line much more adeptly than the last two books.

The character interactions felt more natural and polished as well, which adds to a richer reading experience.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book, and on the strength of it am eagerly awaiting any further instalments in the series.

Highly recommended.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2013 Reading Challenge. All my 2013 AWWC reviews can be found here.

Wizard Squared is the third book in the Rogue Agent series by K. E. Mills. You can read my review of the first book in the series, The Accidental Sorcerer, here and my review of the second book, Witches Incorporated, here. Those reviews cover a lot of my general thoughts on the world building and general background, so I’ll keep this review shorter and focused on the plot of this third book.

Wizard Squared is essentially a parallel reality story. In The Accidental Sorcerer, the protagonist (Gerald) makes certain noble decisions to resolve the plot. In Wizard Squared, the author postulates an alternate world where Gerald made other, less noble decisions and as a result warped himself into an evil sorcerer.

I thought this plot had a lot of possibilities, and was looking forward to reading the book. However, I wasn’t taken with the direction it went in. In some ways I am guilty of wanting a different book than the one the author wrote, which isn’t really fair.

The first section of the book retells the ending of The Accidental Sorcerer, but with the alternate ending. This went on for quite a long time – it almost lost me to be honest. I did wonder whether this kind of backstory might have been woven into the plot a little more seamlessly (and briefly).

Perhaps as a result of the extensive introduction, the rest of the story felt rushed and didn’t broaden the readers view of the world Mills has created as much as the previous two books. This was disappointing.

Evil Gerald was a little too “moustache twirling” for my tastes. He had gone completely and utterly bonkers, and because the conversion to cartoon evil was so complete, it was hard to summon the “there but for the grace of god” type feeling I think the reader was supposed to have. I think there was an opportunity to portray a more subtly evil Gerald, which would have made some of good Gerald’s decisions more complex and morally ambiguous.

I mentioned this in the review of Witches Incorporated, but the use of Gerald’s wild and unpredictable powers to resolve plot issues irked me particularly in this book. None of the character’s actions have much impact – Gerald’s power did most of the work. And his powers were not particularly under his control. So really, things worked out via luck more than anything else. I found this slightly unsatisfying.

As a stand alone book, I’d have trouble recommending this one. If you are enjoying the series overall (which I am), there is enough character progression to warrant reading, but don’t be afraid to skip a few pages where necessary. 

Fortunately (spoilers) I enjoyed the fourth book in the series (Wizard Undercover) a lot more.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2013 Reading Challenge. All my 2013 AWWC reviews can be found here.

Witches Incorporated is the second book in the Rogue Agent series by K. E. Mills. You can read my review of the first book in the series, The Accidental Sorcerer, here.

K. E. Mills is a pen name of writer Karen Miller. After I’d read The Accidental Sorcerer, I attended a writing workshop with Miller at the Australian National SF Con. At the end of the workshop she gave away some piles of books in a sort of lucky door prize, and I was fortunate enough to win the rest of the series. Autographed no less. So I guess you could say that I’m reviewing some books I received gratis, but given I won them fair and square I’m not losing sleep over it. Besides, you try elbowing aside some other contestants to make sure you get a particular pile of books – I worked for my loot!

I might leave that last paragraph out of the Goodreads entry. Anyway, back to the review.

Witches Incorporated is set after the events of The Accidental Sorcerer and follows the adventures of Gerald and his friends as:

1. Gerald completes his secret agent training (to become a “janitor”);
2. Monk continues his mad inventor schtick for the government;
3. Princess Melissande, Reg and a new character (Monk’s sister Bibbie) set up a witching locus agency (Witches Inc)

As the title suggests, this book focuses mostly on the last dynamic, with the point of view character mostly switching between Melissande and Gerald. After an interesting prologue with Gerald, the focus of the first half of the book is almost entirely on Melissande and the witching agency.

Melissande’s “promotion” to a primary point of view character is an interesting choice. It certainly gives a different perspective. Melissande is the least powerful (magic-wise) of the characters, and given Gerald’s super-wizard status, this gives us a slightly more relatable character to see the world through. In that way she takes the place of Gerald in the first book, before he came into his powers.

This brings me to one of the issues I had with this book (and with the rest in the series, truth be told)  – just how powerful Gerald has become. The first book had Gerald in the underdog position most of the time, which made him more endearing. From this book onwards, he is (by a long way) the most powerful wizard in the world. It changes his dynamic with his friends and old enemies, making restraint his most strongly emphasised personality trait. Restraint isn’t the most compelling trait in the world. His poorly controlled and understood powers also make for a convenient way for him to get out of sticky situations, without him being fully aware of how he does it.

The plot brings together the at-first-blush-relatively-trivial mystery that Witches Inc  has been hired to solve with Gerald’s first janitorial mission. The story moved along at a fair pace, and the ins and outs of the various bits of industrial espionage and implications for international politics were interesting and kept me reading.

The focus on a broader range  of characters did add to the richness of the world Mills has created. There is a lot of banter and I found the interactions interesting enough, although there was a little bit too much of the Robert Jordan style “women and men don’t understand each other” dynamic for my taste. That’s a minor gripe though.

I really enjoy the world Mills has created – a kind of steampunk powered by magic vibe. The first book focused on a colonial setting, this one was set in the motherland. I liked the extension of the world view, and gaining a better understanding of how the world works.

Overall I enjoyed dipping into this series again, enough so that I continued in my journey reading the remaining books straight afterwards.

Recommended.

I also reviewed this book on Goodreads. View all my reviews.

This work by Mark Webb is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.