The Accidental Sorcerer
(The Rogue Agent trilogy, Book 1)
K. E. Mills
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***+
DESCRIPTION: When Stuttey's Superior Staff factory exploded during a visit from Department of Thaumaturgy probationary inspector Gerald Dunwoody, it wasn't his
fault, but who would take his word over the irate factory foreman's? Gerald's just a lowly Third Grade wizard, trained by correspondence course, with little ancestry and
an unremarkable record, while Stuttey's manufactures the finest wizard staffs in all of Ottosland... and a factory with that reputation would never, as Gerald claimed,
overload faulty thaumaturgical equipment just to boost profits. Besides, if the accident had happened the way he said it did, any Third Grade wizard would be a smoking
pile of cinders on the factory floor. Gerald can't explain how he survived, but with the powerful company screaming for blood, it wouldn't matter if he could. Defamed,
unemployed, and broke, he's ready to pack in the wizard gig and crawl home to his parents - until he chances upon a job offer halfway across the world, beyond the reach
of the Stuttey's scandal and the back-scratching old-boy's-network of the Department.
The kingdom of New Ottosland occupies a small oasis in the vast Kallarapi desert. Founded centuries ago and subsequently forgotten by their homeland, they live and die by
Tradition. The young King Lional has dangerously bold plans for the future, and try as she might, his practical, headstrong sister Melissande can't talk him out of them...
nor can the Kallarapi sultan, whom Lional antagonizes by refusing to pay the traditional trade route tariffs. But the king foresees a day when New Ottosland won't have to
kowtow to camel-riding heathens, when his kingdom will be a force worthy of international respect. To realize his plans, Lional needs a new Court Wizard, and it's up to
Melissande to find one.
The day Gerald Dunwoody accepted the job of Court Wizard of New Ottosland, he thought his troubles were over. Instead, they're just beginning... and before they're through,
the factory explosion at Stuttey's will seem as insignificant as a pop cap in a playground.
REVIEW: This book starts out light, meandering towards goofy. Gerald, his friends and enemies, and his magic-dominated world feel clunky and caricatured. Time
and again they act in ways that defied their own characters and general logic, just to get one more sarcastic line in or further the slow-building story. I found it
difficult to sympathize with them for quite some time. By the time I reached the part where the emissaries of the desert nation were introduced - as infidel-hating grovelers
to their triad gods - I wasn't sure I'd have the mental stamina to push through to the end.
A few chapters later, the story starts taking some interesting turns. Shades of depth and darkness reveal themselves. Even the desert dwellers bring far more to the game
board than their inauspicious introduction hints at, becoming much more than pseudo-Arab stereotypes. By the end, Gerald has visited many dark places and done many things
he hadn't thought himself capable of... in good ways and bad. The very ending is pretty much foreshadowed by the title (and the fact that it's Book 1 of a trilogy), but
otherwise the story came to an unexpectedly satisfying conclusion on several fronts. Unfortunately, the clunkiness held it down in the ratings, as did some of the characters,
who retained several of their more annoying, caricatured traits long past the point where things went in an otherwise original direction. The worst offender was Gerald's
companion Reg, a witch cursed into a bird's body; not only was she so shrewish and annoying that I failed to understand how anyone could be friends with her, but she kept
contradicting her own desires not to reveal her sentient nature by firing off her ever-loaded tongue at the drop of a hat. (And her survival depends on secrecy? How has
she lasted three minutes, let alone centuries?) I doubt I'll follow the rest of the trilogy, unless I find an exceptionally cheap enough copy of Book 2.
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