Adventure writers can go two ways with their series: They can either entangle their hero in a series of adventures, loosely linked but not necessarily sequential, or the hero can adventure while striving towards a goal. Wizard series tend towards the second, where the hero perhaps gets himself in a mess in an early story, then works to resolve the knotty problem in books 2-N. Think of Harry Dresden or Simon & Montague or Harry Potter or the Iron Druid. Or Alex Verus in Benedict Jacka’s excellent series.
Marked, book 9 in Jacka’s series, starts with Alex seated (rather precariously) on the junior council of Light Mages in Britain. In the first two books Alex is refreshingly honest, with simple goals: Stay alive and keep his friends healthy and alive. Sadly for him, Alex apprenticed to a Dark Mage before leaving in revulsion. Also he is a very skilled diviner and lots of people want to use him. Other people want to use him to get to the Dark Mage leadership – a place Alex vehemently rejects and fled for his life to avoid a few books ago in Burned. Now he is trapped as the aide to the one Dark Mage with a seat on the Council. His boss is in mage jail so Alex temporarily holds the seat.
Marked picks up with the same grim feeling we saw first in Burned, then Bound. Alex has too many enemies and is too well known to simply slide off into obscurity. He lost that choice a few books back when he tried to throw his lot in with the Light Mages. Now Alex believes his only hope is to get so powerful that no one wants to go after him and he can choose what he does. This opens the story up for many plot threads but we lost the charming young mage we met in the first few books.
Jacka brings a few new twists to the story. Earlier Alex implied that young mages didn’t have a lot of choice. They could apprentice with a Light or a Dark, they could attend the Light apprentice program, or they could remain adepts who are at everyone’s mercy. This time Alex muses that the declared Light and Dark mages are a fraction of the total; he says the majority are neutral, independents. It isn’t clear how one becomes (or stays) independent, and we’re left to wonder whether Alex could have lost the target on his back if he had not made waves, had been independent. Apparently it is too late for that and Alex will move forward.
Characters
As you can see from the discussion about Alex’s choices, Jacka makes his characters into real people that we care about. We identify with and root for Alex as he threads between morality and survival. I’m not sure I’d have made the same choice he did, but I care that he did make it and want him to succeed. (Of course, if your primary goal is survival then eventually you will lose.)
Alex is a thinker who is growing into a deadly doer; in fact he isn’t always thinking as well as he should. He goes to ask the dragon under Arachne’s home some questions but doesn’t seem to absorb what he learns. (Typical of dragon foretelling, the answers are cryptic to useless.)
Alex has matured considerably in the nine books. He’s gained and lost friends, gained power, gained cynicism and gained too many enemies. He always has good reason for what he does but it doesn’t always work and other people end up holding the bag – and holding a grudge against Alex.
Marked spends as much time on Anne as on Alex. Anne is both the hero and the villain; Alex relies on her, saves her; she saves him. Anne is enigmatic and it will be interesting to see how her character develops.
Anne wants to be a mage and live a normal life, to have a family, friends. She got abducted and trained to kill as a teen and from that experience developed all sorts of deadly skills. She shoved the immoral parts of her personality into a fortress, walled it off and threw away the key because she didn’t want to kill. Alex encounters this non-Anne a few times and so far Anne is unwilling to integrate her two sides. That may be book 10.
Back Story
The Light Mage council and its adherents are a typical bunch of academics/middle managers/PTA bosses. They like to play games about dominance and face and will bicker and debate endlessly before taking action. And when they do take action they aren’t too concerned about things like other people or truth or morality. Yet Jacka made this believable – in fact it’s more believable than the benevolent, altruistic Council that some books about wizards and magic have. People are people whether mages or not, and that’s how people act.
These mage leaders, both light and dark, seem motivated by power and greed for more power. The revelation that the council is actually a minority of mages makes this more believable. Most people do not dedicate their lives to power. In Marked we see that is true for most mages too.
Even so, the endless threats that Alex faces seem a bit over the top. He doesn’t seem to know how to gain a power base of people, aside from his friends, and is the obvious scapegoat for everything that goes wrong. I hope he learns to expand his definition of “power” to include influence based on wisdom, credibility, helpfulness and not just raw magical power.
Overall
Jacka writes well and Marked has good dialogue, interesting, likable characters. Marked has more action and a little less reflection than prior novels in the series, that combined with Alex’s declared intention to amass as much power as possible to ensure he and his friends survive makes the story a little less appealing than the prior novels. I like Alex but I liked him a little more when he was the earnest want-to-do-good guy. He still wants to do good and he still does good but he’s harder edged now, not as pleasant a chap.
My rating here would be 4+ or just under 5. Marked is solid, excellent story and characters, but I don’t feel like it is quite a 5 star novel.
My thanks to the publishers who provided an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I on the other hand like Alex more and more. The fact that he has evolved makes him more believable. I read once that a pessimist is an optimist with experience. Don’t agree entirely with that but it does imply that we are shaped and changed by our experiences. To imagine a character who has gone through the story lines Alex has been presented in and to expect him to remain wide eyed and innocent would be a stretch.