The Stone Mage and the Sea

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

Sal and his father have been on the run from something for as long as Sal can remember. Now they???ve come to the seaside town of Fundelry and it seems like Sal???s father may finally be giving up. Sal doesn???t know what they???ve been running from, or what happened to his mother, who left them when he was young. Most of the townsfolk are suspicious of the newcomers, but Lodo the hermit and his young apprentice Shilly take an interest in Sal. Under their tutelage, Sal learns that he has some blossoming magical powers, which might be what his father has been trying to keep concealed. He must learn to control these powers before the Sky Wardens can find him.

The Stone Mage & The Sea is the first novel in Sean Williams??? young adult series called THE CHANGE. Despite the familiar young-boy-discovers-he???s-got-a-destiny type of YA epic fantasy elements, The Stone Mage & The Sea has some unique qualities to praise. The setting, for one. Rather than the familiar European medieval setting, the world of THE CHANGE appears to be influenced by Sean Williams??? native Australia. Red inland deserts, where the Stone Mages practice their craft, give way to sandy dunes as we approach the sea where Sky Wardens use seagull spies to hunt for youngsters with burgeoning talent. The technological status of this society is intriguingly unclear. Sal???s father has a motorized dunebuggy, but it???s the only one we see, and it seems to be the highest form of technology available in this world.

Williams??? plot and characters are engaging and his writing is solid, though it lacks even a trace of humor. It will appeal most to its target YA audience. Adults will wonder why Sal, at 12 years old, knows so little of his own history. What happened to his mother? What are they running from? Why, when the children of Fundelry are hoping to be chosen by the Sky Wardens, does Sal???s father think they???re so evil? It would have saved them both a lot of trouble if his father had just explained things to Sal. We get the impression that Sal has just now started questioning his father in earnest. Of course, the reader understands that the tale is being unfolded for us as it unfolds for Sal, but I found it hard to admire a 12 year old who???s had no idea what???s going on around him for this long.

The Stone Mage & The Sea is definitely a set-up book. By the end, Sal is just beginning to get a glimpse of his destiny and the book stops as tragedy strikes and things really get going. Most teen readers will be eager to move on to book two, The Sky Warden and the Sun. This is an intriguing world with a unique magic system that we???re only beginning to understand. There are lots of interesting questions left unanswered.

Eric Michael Summerer narrates Audible Frontiers??? version of The Stone Mage & The Sea. He gives a good reading and I can confidently recommend this version of The Stone Mage & The Sea. Audio readers will be pleased.

Warning!
Some light spoilers for the romances in this book are contained in this review.

Maybe a bit closer to 2.5 stars, but there's nothing truly bad (past the first chapter) in here. Just annoying. That being said, there was also a lot a did like about the book. So, let's get started.

The diversity is top notch. That was one of the major selling points for me with the book - as well as (as I heard it) one of the things the authors really wanted to depict (diversity in an Western style setting) - and I think it was done really, really well. Pretty sure none of the main characters are white - maybe one of the five is.

On the note of the characters, I didn't like them all, but I didn't dislike any of them. Mia is probably my favorite - though a certain switch to her personality (which I will talk more about later) makes that a little less easy to say than it would have been. I really like Yuki as well. Those two are definitely my two favorite. Jennie is likable, for the most part. Ross is...actually better than I was expecting after his introduction. Felicite is definitely my least favorite, though probably also the most interesting. She's a manipulator and is pretty darn unpleasant.

Those are the good things. The indifferent things are the writing style and the world building. Both serve their purpose without getting in the way. The world building could have been explained a little better, but there were enough inventive things to distract from the fact that we don't know the how or the why of this world.

The things I really had problems with...This is going to be a little complicated to explain, because they are fairly closely intertwined, but they are two distinct problems.

Okay, so, our five main characters all have different things going on in their lives. They have individual plots - buried somewhere deep, deep beneath all the romantic thoughts and entanglements. The overriding obsession of most of these characters is a romantic one - or is in some way related to how good someone looks or how good of a match they would be.

Nearly everything that these character experience in the first eighty-five percent of the story revolves around romance or dating.

There are some good things to note here. One of the main boys is gay. There is some casual poly rep. (Don't know if it will stick around, but, hey, we got a poly date. Which was how they settled the love triangle. So...that was awesome.)

What wasn't so great for me is that one of the characters, Mia, starts off sounding like she's on the aro or ace spectrum. (She didn't want to go on dates, but she wanted to want to go one dates. Her dad also definitely thinks she's on the spectrum somewhere. Which was funny and awkward.) But then she meets Ross and...it kind of feels like she finally met ‘the one' that she wants these things with. So she gets to be normal now. Which, if that's the direction, is gross. So, I hope the authors didn't intend that, but that's how it reads a little to me.

And then one of the girls has a boyfriend, but another of the girls wants him. No, she's not in love with him, he'd just be good for her image and status. She tries to drive a wedge between them while they are still dating and then tries to lay claim to him after they break up.

Sooo, all these romantic entanglements are what happens in the first 85% of the book.

Which brings me to my next problem.

Nothing happens.

Seriously.

We have like one minor skirmish fight that has nothing to do with the main plot (that only finally starts in last 80% of the book or so). Which is sad, because when things happen, it's actually a pretty fun book.

But nothing ever happens.

The actual plot is pretty much one big fight at the end of the book. There's no build up to it, no indication that's where we are headed. It just happens. Like everything else in the book that isn't romance. That, there's lots of build up to. To me, it felt like the authors wanted to write a romance and relationship centered story.

I also want to add, I almost DNF'd this book in the first chapter - due to Ross and bloodsucking trees. (Literally.) Things do improve.

I do want to add that I really have no idea if I will be continuing this series. The synopsis of the sequels sound like a lot of the characters I liked in the first one aren't in the second and...well, this was a library borrow and they don't have the second one so I would either have to have them hunt it up for me, or buy it and...both sound like more trouble than it deserves.