Spellslinger (Sebastien de Castell)

Spellslinger
The Spellslinger series, Book 1
Sebastien de Castell
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: A Jan'Tep is strong. A Jan'Tep is loyal to clan and family. A Jan'Tep wields magic both to strike and defend. All his life, fifteen-year-old Kellen has striven to live up to the expectations of his people and especially his father. All his life, he has failed, mostly because his magic has failed. Not one of the six bands on his forearms, indicating the six powers over which a Jan'Tep sorcerer may exert control, has burst to glowing life, while his younger sister Shallan is well on her way to being the youngest confirmed mage in clan history. Worse, what little power he can hold grows less by the day. If he cannot pass the four mage trials by his birthday, he will be declared Sha'Tep, a powerless servant, relegated to menial tasks in the household - or, worse, sent to the mines, the ultimate shame upon the family. Hard as he struggles, he cannot seem to do what he needs to do to succeed as a Jan'Tep, but knows no other way to live... until he meets the woman with the flame-red hair.
Ferius has a strange accent, peculiar customs, and the most bizarre ideas - like the notion that the Jah'Tep aren't really the greatest people in the known world, with the strongest magics. Her pockets hold foul smoking-reeds and myriad cards, each of which holds mysteries that Kellen, for all that he should be above such outsider nonsense, cannot help wanting to unravel. Everyone else in the clan is convinced that the woman is a spy at best, or an active traitor at worst. When the clan prince dies and a strange illness weakens the magic of Kellen's fellow initiates, even more suspicion falls on the stranger. But Kellen can't believe she's to blame. His efforts to uncover the truth lead to secrets too dangerous to expose - secrets that will rewrite how he thinks of his family, his clan, and the powers upon which the Jan'Tep have built their reputation.

REVIEW: At first, this reads like a fun, witty tale with an underdog hero struggling to come of age under difficult circumstances. Somewhere along the way, though, things stop being quite as fun... or, rather, the tone remains somewhat fun, but the story and characters become less so, and not in a good way. Sarcastic characters have to still be likable, but I came to resent being stuck in Kellen's head. He's just too obtuse, requiring multiple mule kicks to the cranium to drive anything into his brain; I lost track of how many times he was surprised by the level of sheer sadism his people, particularly his peers, could inflict. (And they are, indeed, sadistic, torturing animal and human alike in terrible ways, again and again and again. I got the point early on; later instances started feeling repetitious, driving the nail of "They're Not Good People!" in with fierce hammer blows long after the head of the nail vanished into the wood.) The supporting cast isn't much deeper than Kellen, unfortunately, and the girls - despite his sister Shallan's prodigal abilities - have a way of degenerating into helplessness at key moments. Even the stranger Ferius needs rescuing by the fifteen-year-old not-quite-mage more than seems strictly necessary, for all that she teaches him a few of the tricks he uses to rescue others. Speaking of rescues, de Castell seems unusually verbose and slow in relating these pivotal moments, even when Kellen's in the middle of a firefight where every millisecond of hesitation could be the difference between life or death. I kept wanting to reach into the book and give him a shove to get moving, already.
Aside from all that, it's a not-bad story of growing up, learning to see past the lies on which reputations and histories are too often built, even whether or not it is ever justified to let rage and vengeance run loose, but by the end I was mostly turning pages to finish, not because I was deeply absorbed in a somewhat-telegraphed conclusion (that, despite several gratuitously gruesome deaths, goes out of its way to spare key players, presumably for future installments.) Even the title term, "spellslinger," hardly ever comes up in the text; it doesn't even get mentioned until maybe the three-fourths point in the book and hardly figures into the plot at all, so it seems a bit odd (and, yes, a bit of a spoiler) to name the story for it. Spellslinger can be fun and moves fairly well (if sometimes in circles), but I couldn't help feeling it should've been better.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Traitor's Blade (Sebastien de Castell) - My Review
The Flaw in All Magic (Ben S. Dobson) - My Review
The Rithmatist (Brandon Sanderson) - My Review