Voice of Power (The Spoken Mage Book 1) Kindle Edition

I enjoyed this read. It has great characters and interesting plot. I like the concept a lot. Great read and can’t wait to see what happens next.

This review covers the first three books of the series. I do not believe there are any major spoilerscreated by that, but there it is.Speaking of Harry Potter knockoffs [which I was doing in another review], here is one done right, andactually still in the YA domain: No sex or harems here. There isstill, of course, young love. And perhaps 'knockoff' is too strong.Let's say it has influences and goes its own way with them.Ardann is a medieval-ish second world nation at war, a war that hasbeen going on for over thirty years now. The nobility has paid aprice, to be sure, but the Mulan-like conscription amongst thepeasantry is biting even harder.Elena is one of those peasants. Her brother has won a rare scholarshipto the royal university (training to be a mentat, basically), andis the family's only chance to break free from poverty, so he can'tgo, and her younger sister has always been sickly so sending herwould be an automatic death sentence. Now 16, Elena has resignedherself to her eventual fate when the turns 18. That's not whatfate has planned for her however.Walking through the woods foraging for food, Elena comes across twoteens from her village beating a young boy. When she intervenes,they explain he was drawing in the dirt, copying words from aparchment dropped by a group of mages who came through town on theirway to the capital. Elena is as horrified as they are and realizesthat the child must be taught a lesson vivid enough that he neverdoes it again.. which point she believes has been reached, andover-reached, by the teens. Written words have power, and they arelucky the child hasn't caused a village destroying conflagrationor worse -- Only those with the mage gift can safely read or write.After taking the child home, sees a mob gathering around her family'ssmall shop. Apparently the teens have talked, and it is known themage visitors bought some supplies at the store, so in some wayElena's family has bought near catastrophe down on the town. Herfather is unable to disperse the mob and things look to turn uglyuntil in panic Elena yells 'Stop!' and they do.The next day, detective mages ride out from the capital to tracethe untrained and barely disciplined use of power, and Elena findsherself dragooned into the royal mage academy as the only SpokenMage known to be in existence. A peasant amongst nobility, Elenais despised by most of her classmates and much of the staff. Shehasn't a clue what she did, or how to do it again, and being therecertainly hasn't solved her family's problems, or taken her awayfrom the threat of war. In fact, it has probably made everythingworse.I quite liked these. I was prepared for there to be an evil plotby the nobility to keep the peasants down, but in fact writing *is*deadly (if anyone knows why, it has not yet been explained) and thenobles have reasons for what they do -- without those reasons beingfully congruent with the reality faced by the lower classes. Theyhave their own blind spots without being actually evil (mostly).Elena brings a valuable corrective perspective, and, very gradually,she is making herself heard.The books have a Potter-like structure with each focusing on oneof the years of the four year academy, but as in that saga, therealities of the overarching conflict have a way of reaching intothe academy walls, and pulling the students out of them.The end of book three saw Elena taking an action that I am not atall sure was a good idea. Though her reasoning is sound it seemsto solve one of her problems without bringing on the change she isworking for. It will be interesting to see how that works out inthe final book which is to be published at the end of this month(June 2019).Recommended.

I've just recently discovered Melanie Cellier as an author, and I'm truly enjoying her books.I may not be in the targeted age group, but there's a lot of "me's" out there who enjoy the fantasy genre, without all the hard-core violence and gore, and without the sexually explicit detailed "romance" being blended into the storyline. Some may feel it's juvenile, played too low-key for their liking, but I find the scope and depth to be just the right amount.I also like the fact that the book isn't suddenly taken over by the romantic relationships which enivitably, and constantly, seem to crop up in this genre-at least when it's geared toward the female reader. There's nothing worse than having to skim and skip over large sections, just to get back to the main plot-line.There's a fair amount of decent friendships beginning to develop, and one can creatively conceptualize these expanding and emerging into a profound tight-knit comradeship, as well as a lot of open-ended subplots going on amongst all of them.Accordingly, Cellier's world building is spot on. You get the sensation of walking through the academy, the library, the villages, etc.The ending leaves you with a sense of closure, with just enough of a conclusion for you to to experience a polished resolution to the major plot/s that had been presented throughout the book. You are left with a few unsettled questions, but just enough to tease you and make you want to pick up the next book in the series, in an effort to find out just exactly what's going down in the future.I'm looking forward to book 2 in the series. I also see there's a spin-off series based upon the original character of this one. Can't guarantee I'll make it to this next set of books, but I do appreciate the author separating the two storylines.

Yet another young-girl; coming of age and discovering magical powers, as a social misfit, whilst falling in love with the handsome Prince Charming, who is (obviously) physically, socially, and academically her superior.There's even a chapter (or more) on the unexpected Royal Ball / party and the resultant frock that may-or-may-not be acceptable. Gripping stuff. Cinderella much?Yet, somehow; even the plethora of all these ridiculously tired cliches could be forgiven in the context of the genre, due to firstly the setting & pace (brisk while not rushed) and secondly the interesting though (ironically) unmentioned possible allusion to Logos-like, power of The Word undertones; (spoken or written) for the magic; -were it not for the incessant infuriating, pace-undermining and interest-threatening first-person insecurities the main character constantly questions herself with.Quite how she can can ever decide what day it is or whether to breathe in or out first is a mystery, as she is so "tortured."Her love-interest indulgently rolls his eyes and declares her infuriating.I managed to finish the book, but constantly rolled mine and thought how tedious her small-mindedness was. Just get on with it already.Maybe by book two her confidence (very) late-blossoms, so she stops acting like an insecure 12 year old.

Nice world building and magical premise. Yet another 'magic school' setting needs it. What it would also need is depth, intelligence and maturity that it is so clearly lacking. The author has not given this much thought, all too obviously, except perhaps to pace the narrative so as to keep you reading along (lesson 102 in creative writing class).To be fair it's no hardship to let the book take you, but its shallow immaturity leaves you with a feeling that 12 year olds are in charge... I think I may have detected half-hearted efforts here and there to build depth! There's alot of much better stuff out there, and this too trite to invest in follow ups. Overpriced!

I do love a tale set in a magic school. It’s always fun when the odds are stacked against out protagonist and they have to fight against expectations and learn forbidden magic. This book should tick all the boxes. The book is okay, but I have read much better. My biggest issue is the ill-written romance. I just don’t believe it. It also feels like the author doesn’t believe it either. Lucas feels like two different characters forced together and I don’t understand how and why Elena could be at all interested beyond a pretty face. I can’t see myself buying into it in future books either unless it improves.The magic system and society at large are both well thought out and interesting. I do like the plotting behind the scenes by the various families. The premise isn’t original and I don’t think it’s sufficiently fresh in the way it’s told. The whole story is quite predictable in the way in unfolds and the author has a nasty habit of glossing over passing time in a a few sentences. Lazy. But all things considered, for a mindless afternoon read it’s enjoyable. I’ll persevere with the next book and hope it gets better.

I liked this book. I'll definitely read the others after this one. While you don't really learn much about the characters aside from the main one they are very likable. The story has a nice pace to it as well so I never really put it down. My only issue with it would be that there needs to be more explanation on the world itself as it does come across as very far fetched. The whole story revolves around the written word being a destructive force that only mages can exhibit any kind of control over. They have to specially treat any paper they don't intend to use for spell casting and have forbidden all the non-magic folk from reading and writing to prevent disaster however it is pointed out for the purposes of geography that they can use symbols to identify places. This bothered me somewhat as the written word is just technically a symbol for a spoken word, so this makes me think that perhaps it's just their language that's magic and simply inventing a new alphabet would be the thing to do. I kept thinking "if you can do symbols, why not just substitute the letters for symbols? And what about numbers? Why does arithmetic all have to be done mentally if you're not a mage?" This is my only gripe with the magic but I really did enjoy it all things considered.

This book seems to be aimed at teenagers yet when i read it as a 12 year old i still found cliche and very immature.(I am now 14).The plot could be so much more impactful if the characters had depth. i have read all the books and whilst reading the twists that were supposedly mindblowing i felt unimpressed and quite frankly exasperated. The lack of personality given to the characters,especially the cliche love interest, is what caused me to become so bored and uninterested. This seems to be a pattern a long all the authors books. I would advise making the characters more interesting instead of pumping out carbon copies of a boring book. I still enjoyed the book a lot but the flaws greatly outweighed the pros so i might've sounded a bit too 'rude'. What i am trying to do is give constructive criticism.