Another interesting twist on magic in this story is that performing magic comes at a cost... the cost of the mage scribe's life. Not all at once, mind you, but little by little, causing mage scribes to age more rapidly, instantly aging with each completed magical intention. And, should the mage scribe make a mistake? The magic then runs wild, coming out as something other than the mage scribe's intention... as a wild, magical being known as a gossamer... yet, it still incurs its life-cost.
The world of The Gossamer Mage has its own unique social and political aspects that make it interesting, but the idea of mage scribes was of particular interest to me, taking tropes of the wizened old wizard, arcane symbols and trained skills and rare materials improving the quality, intricacy or grandeur of a magical effect and weaving them into an exciting new tapestry.
In addition to mage scribes, which are only ever magic-sensitive males, there are Daughters, which are magic-sensitive females. They never perform magic, but learn and teach the arcane symbols which make up the language of the Deathless Goddess, from whom all of the magic comes. One such Daughter, Kait Adler, is rising to a higher position and, hence, traveling from her rural forest home of Woodshaven to Tiler's Hold. Once there, she discovers a dark, ancient evil that is threatening the Deathless Goddess... and everything else, truly. Meanwhile, Leksand Loggerson, Kait's son, is on his way to the college of magic to become a mage scribe and Maleonarial, former scribemaster of the school, has been living as a hermit for years, working to discover a way to stop magic's life-toll, whether it ends magic altogether or kills the Deathless Goddess, so that young men such as Leksand won't write away their lives to create magical intentions. These three make for an unlikely trio of heroes, but they end up joining forces to fight against the evil seeping into the realm and threatening life as they know it.
I know that the idea of a "page-turner" is cliché... And I won't say that I couldn't put it down. I will say that I really didn't want to. I found myself reading The Gossamer Mage until my eyes were heavy while I was recently on a Caribbean cruise. There are always things to eat, things to drink, and ways to make merry when you're cruising in the Caribbean, but there I was, reading "just to the next section break" and then "just to the end of the chapter."
The premise is interesting, the world is full of wonder, and the use of dialect for the rural characters is delightful. The only complaint I have about the book is how it doesn't allow for a similar book as a sequel. Perhaps Julie E. Czerneda could write a prequel? I would love to experience more of the world of Tananen.
