The Lost City of Ithos

Not much I feel that I can say besides amazingly well done.

Book 4 had me glued to my screen from the moment I started reading.

Improving on the (small) shortfalls found in previous books the Lost City of Ithos simply had me falling in love with the characters all over again.

I absolutely loved the introduction of a refreshing theme of what could be horror in this book with some of the mid and final chapters of which I would love to get more of in later books, Im no fan of horror usually (and while this isnt actually a horror book of course) the implementation in book 4 was a wonderful change of pace before getting back to the action

Now that the stakes have been raised once again I am even more excited for the next book in the series

This has everything I like about Mage Errant — Hugh and his friends are getting more powerful, their comradery is strong, we get to see plenty of creative uses of their magic, and the amazing world-building continues.

And boy oh boy is there action. Book 3 was a bit of a slow burn. This book is nearly nonstop action right from the start.

And while the book comes to a VERY satisfying conclusion, it’s also setting up even bigger stakes with the promise of TONS of conflict for our heroes in the next couple of books.

Mage Errant is a superb series, well written and original. Any fan of fantasy will enjoy it. I can’t wait for book 5!

There’s no question that “The Lost City of Ithos” is the best entry yet in the Mage Errant series. The series as a whole has many strengths – including but not limited to its likeable characters, increasingly epic and frantic, creative mage battles, inspired world-building, and a flair for combining real-world science and philosophy into a creative and fascinating magic system. In this book, every single one of these strengths are ratcheted up by a power of three.

Up until now, what we knew about the wider world of Anastis was limited to information shared in exposition by other characters, and by a single trip to a dragon-led city named Theras Tel in book two. Now, the student mages Hugh, Talia, Sabae, and Godrick embark on a journey to locate a lost imperial capitol that has long since been exiled by Hugh’s master, the ancient and powerful sphinx Kanderon Krux. On the way, they explore two additional fully inhabited and well-realized cities (not counting the lost imperial city of Ithos), cross a mountain range and a storm tossed and serpent infested sea, witness unimaginable magical creatures, and survive dangerous encounters with Havathi Swordsmen- powerful mages equipped with sentient enchanted weapons, bent on reaching the ancient capitol before they do.

It’d be hard to cover all the things I love about this book in a single review, so I’ll try to hit the high points: Everything you like about past Mage Errant books gets bigger and better. EVERY character enhances their magical abilities significantly and puts their new abilities into practice, with explosive results. EVERY protagonist feels fully human and relatable, and their relationships develop in interesting ways over the course of the book. When the author gets into the weeds about the somewhat granular mechanics of how magic works, exploring the source of magic and weaving it into history and geology and biology underpinning the wonders of the world, all it does is lend a greater sense of realism to otherwise over-the-top action sequences and lovingly realized set pieces. The book is simultaneously full of ideas, while remaining grounded in the books leading up to it.

Don’t miss it!

TLDR: John Bierce continues to be one of my favorite authors, this is the strongest entry in an already incredibly strong series. Stop waiting, go buy it, leave some reviews for it too.

Spoiler free review

Another Mage Errant book, another amazing time. Seriously this is just going to be praise, go buy it. I am actually finding it hard to say what exactly I liked when I liked so many aspects of this book. So I think I am going to just talk about one specific part of this book, the characters. No spoilers.

The characters that Bierce writes are fantastic. Very few authors, with very few words, can make minor characters feel as real and as deep as John does. I want to read full books on some of these side characters. An entire series on the future exploits of a certain Toad owner would be very fun. Just the right amount of detail and actions are put into the characters to make them feel distinct.

This is magnified many times over with the main characters. It is a very hard thing to expect certain emotional reactions from characters, and then see them play out with more care than that. You get to know these characters, their flaws, their small down time moments, their fears and hopes. I love these characters.

My ONLY complaint about the book, and the characters, is that the antagonists dont get nearly this much depth. Their motivations do seem compelling, but that is almost all we get, with some very minor exceptions. It is a hard thing to say that is a flaw with the book, but it did stand out a bit.

Other stuff:
The magic is still incredibly cool
The world is awesome, more awesome here than even before
You get some payoffs to things that have been set up for a while
There are even more cool things being set up for future books I am super excited about
Man I love these characters

First – this is a very good series with a lot of positives. The most outstanding part is the magic system, which is well thought out (even if the lesson chapters are a bit overdone) and has some good character progression with that magic system. The adventure and intrigue keeps me invested in the story and I am looking forward to the next installment. However, this series is starting to show its flaws, especially in book 3 and 4.

The first downside is that Hugh is beginning to turn into a side character in his own story. This may be to better highlight the other characters that accompany Hugh in his adventure but there really isn’t much to be character progression for any character in this book beyond romantic subplots (which is the major downside to this book).

The romantic subplots are shallow at best and don’t really take the characters backgrounds into account. Talia is part of a clan culture, Hugh is an outcast from a poorly developed (at least magically) country and sabae was from a culture of arranged marriages and yet their romantic problems feel more at home in an american teen romance story. Although the Talia and Hugh romance plots are ok, Sabae and Godricks plots are very shallow and essentially pointless waste. There is even a part where Talia and Sabae are talking about cantrips in terms of relationships which makes no sense considering the characters involved.

This especially makes Godrick’s character feel tokenised and just there for the sake of inclusiveness and is a taking away from his character instead of giving anything interesting for the character to develop. I don’t even remember anything about his character such as what culture he is from and why he is the way he is.

Just feel the series would benefit from less romantic subplot and more progression (in terms of character growth) and adventure. I am hoping the next book improves the series, as its starting to turn into a disappointment after a very strong start with Book 1 and 2.