DRAGON MAGE by M.L. Spencer (Rivenworld #1)

I’ve been an Epic Fantasy reader for decades, cutting my proverbial teeth on Margaret Weis’s DragonLance series shortly after they were released, then Lord of the Rings, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, Wheel of Time, The Farseer and many more. The subgenre has proven durable and popular for many years for myself and many readers. However, because the subgenre has proven so popular, many Epic Fantasy novels are paint by numbers with little to elevate them above the pack. Some books, I’d say maybe one per year that I read from the many published manages to rise above the crowd. Dragon Mage by M.L. Spencer is one such novel. Although initially independently/self-published in 2020, I finally dove into the book recently, in the form of the audiobook read masterfully by Ben Farrow.

Aram Raythe has the power to challenge the gods. Too bad he doesn’t know it.

Aram thinks he’s nothing but a misfit from a small fishing village in a dark corner of the world. As far as Aram knows, he has nothing, with hardly a possession to his name other than a desire to make friends and be accepted by those around him, which is something he’s never known.

But Aram is more. Much, much more.

Unknown to him, Aram bears within him a gift so old and rare that many people would kill him for it, and there are others who would twist him to use for their own sinister purposes. These magics are so potent that Aram earns a place at an academy for warrior mages training to earn themselves the greatest place of honor among the armies of men: dragon riders.

Aram will have to fight for respect by becoming not just a dragon rider, but a Champion, the caliber of mage that hasn’t existed in the world for hundreds of years. And the land needs a Champion. Because when a dark god out of ancient myth arises to threaten the world of magic, it is Aram the world will turn to in its hour of need.

Somewhat par for the course, Aram Raythe is a young boy in a fishing village who is something of an outcast. He has very few friends because most kids his age think he is off, broken, or just not right. Aram has one thing at which he is very good: knots. He knows every knot a fisherman uses, how to tie them, and make them strong. When a few boys decide to bully Aram because he is different, another boy named Markus steps in to help him. It is a bond the two will share for the remainder of their lives.

As it turns out, Aram is very special, he’s got a power within him unseen in his world for years, he’s the kind of person long thought to have died out. When word spreads after he was beaten up, that his blood is brown, as opposed to red, the newly found difference brings unwanted attention to Aram. Only the Auld (the long-thought-to-be-dead mages) have brown blood and which proves the Essence within Aram allows him to be a mage. That attention is from the Exhilari, who have a strong grip of power on the world and want to bring Aram into their fold. At the center of these dark overlords is the sorcerer Sergan, an ambitious member of the Exhilari who sees Aram and his powerful untapped magic as his ticket to the top.

Let’s not forget about Markus, because his relationship with Aram forms the emotional backbone of the novel. Where Aram is discovered to have the potential for great magic within himself, Markus is discovered to be completely immune to magic. People like Markus are often made to be Shields for Mages and Sorcerers. For the purposes of this review the Sorcerers manipulate magic by ingesting Essence from magically endowed creatures, mages are directly linked to magic through their Essence)

In this milieu, the world is riven in two (i.e. the title of the saga is Rivenworld) – the World Above and the World Below. The World Above is where Aram resides, it is a world bereft of people truly attuned to magic. The only way sorcerers can manipulate magic is by consuming the essence of the Auld, essentially naturally born mages. The World Below is a world where dragons and magic are commonplace, where the mages (Auld) can wield magic naturally.

Yes, Dragons. Not just Dragons, but magnificent Dragons who have intelligence and bond with Mages in the World Below. The warrior mages ride the dragons into battle and the way Spencer depicts these scenes and the Dragons themselves is very powerful.

After some tough times (understatement) Aram finds himself in the World Below, where he is not such an outcast. His brown blood, proclivity with knots, and magical qualities are the norm in the World Below, if the level of his power is outside of the norm. Because of his power, it is thought that he could be a Champion, a warrior mage capable of being a savoir who will keep the evil at bay.

The above “summary” barely touches the surface of what Spencer laid out in barely the first half of the novel. Oh yeah, this is a big chonker of a story, the physical book is over 900 pages while the audiobook is just under 30 hours long. The size should not be daunting, never once during the audiobook did I want the pace to increase, I was completely immersed in the world and the story. I would imagine the dead tree edition would feel the same way, based on Spencer’s wonderful, engaging, and inviting prose. Spencer weaves in a lot of the familiar tropes into this Epic story – orphaned boy, prophesized savior, evil overlords, dragon riders, grizzled old knight, well-realized secondary world. Spencer takes these familiar elements and makes them her own.

One of the major ways that Spencer is able to put her own unique stamp on the tried and true Epic Fantasy / Coming of Age story is what she does with Aram, he is neurodiverse on the Autism spectrum. The way she writes his internal dialogue, how characters react to him, his obsession with knots…are very much coded as Autism. My wife is a first-grade teacher and has studied extensively about Autism and special needs and has shared with me some of that knowledge. I’m not trying to proclaim expertise, but some knowledge. Spencer seems to capture that kind of personality and thinking very well with Aram – the awkwardness, the sometimes single-minded obsession with a thing. But she adds so much heart into Aram, the way his inner thoughts come through the page engender only empathy.

This is where it becomes evident Markus is such a wonderful companion to Aram, he immediately recognizes something different about Aram but he doesn’t think anything less of the would-be Champion, and that’s when they first meet. While Markus is understandably confused by some of what he perceives as Aram’s quirks (like Aram’s hidden cave of hanging knots), but there’s no judgement. That empathy Markus exhibits towards Aram is a major throughline of the entire novel.

I want to return to Sergan for a bit, because he is a wonderfully drawn character. He knows he has done some dark and evil things, but he also truly believes much of what he’s done in the past (withdrawing Essensce from living creatures) served a greater goal – ensuring no creatures that came from openings in the veil between the World Above and the World Below cause as little damage and death as possible. As I said, when he and Aram cross paths, Sergan becomes more focused and self-centered. He’s the kind of well-drawn character who I felt at times had the potential to turn the corner from his evil ways, but whose come-uppance was a long-hoped for event in the novel.

Dragon Mage is a Epic novel that manages to perfectly balance world-shattering stakes with powerful interpersonal conflict and human relationships. Spencer takes everything that makes Epic Fantasy such an endearing and magical storytelling canvas and turns out a masterpiece. Dragon Mage was initially a standalone novel and it works perfectly as a self-contained story. But the characters are so wonderful and the world is so rich that there is definitely a lot of room for more story/stories to be told. I can’t wait for it.

Highly recommended.