An innocent accused
Four brothers hunt her down
Will they surrender her?
Kenzie is an orphan. Her heritage is a mystery. She lives on the streets by her wits alone.
A seer proclaims a dark future. Kenzie is at the heart of the prophecy.
Magic is outlawed in the Kingdom, punishable by death. When the King hears the prophecy of a girl born to a mage and a witch, he sends his four sons to hunt her down.
But the brothers have a secret.
And so does the King.
Will they let the witch burn?
Reviewing is inherently subjective so the issues I struggled with while reading the novel may not bother other readers. I don’t want the author to be discouraged as this may be a case of the right book wrong reader.
I found A Mage’s Curse so difficult to finish. I have read a handful of reverse harem novels in the past and the biggest issue that tends to crop up is there isn’t enough time to make the characters three dimensional. The lack of character development makes it difficult for me to care about any of the characters. I’ve only read one author that has managed it and that was only because she basically assigned one book per man. As it stands, this book appears to take place over a relatively short period of time (maybe two weeks total?) and within the first meeting, two out of four brothers are infatuated with her. After one conversation the third is ensnared and the fourth just suddenly decides that she must be protected at all costs. Ares’s extreme jealousy with his brothers, while understandable, made the interactions between Kenzie and the brothers awkward for me as a reader. I find it hard to believe that she would be able to explore a relationship with the others without tempers exploding. Even with accepting some flaws, the insta-love in this situation is highly unlikely. We were told rather than shown.
Now onto Kenzie, our heroine is self-described “street smart” thief that has been making a living stealing from shady characters with the help of her urchin friend. I would imagine living on rough streets like this would result in not only a silver tongue but basic survival and combat skills. However, once she is taken into custody by the four brothers she makes no attempt to run away or fight her way out. She is left unattended at one point and she still sticks around only to be whisked away by a rival group. Many of Kenzie’s decisions don’t correspond with the street-smarts she is supposed to have. Finally, Kenzie was described as a strong woman but I think in her effort to show that, the author neglected to include areas where Kenzie could experience growth of character. Strong is not synonymous with perfect. Readers are perfectly happy to have a flawed heroine and still consider her strong female lead as long as we see either compensation for the flaws or active efforts by the character to fix her issues.
The author has so many ideas and tried to cram them all into one book. I think it needs to be taken back to the story board and fleshed out some more and head to an editor to catch the grammar issues.
**I received a free review copy of A Mage’s Curse from LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.
