Heir to the Darkmage

[Series review]

The last of Lisa Cassidy's four series for me to read. This was actually the one I was most anticipating, because the premise of it seemed the most interesting - a next-gen where we're neither drinking beers with the protagonists of the previous series nor having them parent the kids. The impression after reading is that this is one of her most inconsistent series, but has some of the most interesting concepts, scenes, and moments in her writing.

In this follow-up to The Mage Chronicles, we skip ahead twenty years and follow the daughter of the OG series's villain, as she takes on both the now-conservative government that was established in the denouement of the previous series and a new threat from revolutionaries. This has extremely mixed success. The protagonist, Lira, is a brutal warlord and never truly picks sides, and I loved the more morally gray, Game of Thrones-like scheming and violence that Cassidy brought into this series. It felt completely different in vibe from her previous two series, and she writes a very compelling antihero in Lira. But we still have a YA feel where the good guys are obviously all going to survive (it is YA, to be fair) and a cartoonization of the villain and monsters in this one which you don't really get in Cassidy's other series.

The characters in this one did not work as well as in the two earlier series Cassidy has put out. Her two later series have a much bigger focus on rigorous elements of epic fantasy, as well as darker elements, and I somehow feel the character development has slightly suffered. I did not care about Fari and Tarion and Garan the same way I cared about Tiercelin and Zamaril, or even Cario and Brynn from the previous series.

Lisa Cassidy always brings great plot twists and a good romance. The twists are especially crazy in this one, although none really as effective as the ones in ATOSAS. This series has possibly the most complicated romance of the four, but it didn't land for me the way the others did.

All of Cassidy's series feature some sort of very long and unexpected time skip in them, and one of her strengths is writing about how friendships strengthen and weaken over time. I've come to see Cassidy as someone who writes characters in their twenties really well, and all her YA series have characters reach their early or mid-twenties. I find both the Mage Chronicles series start really slow and only get truly exceptional once the characters reach that sort of age - but when they hit that point, the character moments really start popping. For whatever reason the moments with younger characters don't work as well for me.

I liked this series. It takes risks, ventures into some uncharted areas, and even though it might have a high strikeout rate, hits a lot of home runs.

A close comparison is, very oddly, a long next-gen Harry Potter fanfiction called the Stygian Trilogy, which is also a sequel series to another fanfiction series set twenty years earlier, also has time skips and crazy plot twists, and has an eerily similar plot to the first book. So if you enjoyed this book and are reading my review, maybe check it out - it's one of the most underrated stories in the fandom, and is free to read online.

Rating: 7/10