The Battlemage

By: Taran Matharu

Narrated by: Ralph Lister

Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's Summary

The epic conclusion to the New York Times best-selling Summoner trilogy!

Fletcher and his friends fight for survival in the ether, where they pursue a mortally dangerous quest to rebuild their world and broker peace.

Even as hatred threatens to turn friend into foe, Fletcher must lead a small army of soldiers into battle to protect his ancestral homeland and face his biggest challenge yet: his nemesis, the albino orc Khan, who seeks to destroy everything Fletcher holds dear.

©2017 Taran Matharu (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

Too many unresolved issues

Enjoyed the series but the ending felt rushed. Left a few too many characters just dangling. Very disappointing ending to a good series. Kind of just ruined it.

7 of 7 people found this review helpful

Great- Feels cramped at end

First book ive listened to by this narrator can't complain, ending feels unfinished and cramped

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

I like the book but

I like the book and the series, but I've never read a series where a main character has had so much misfortune happen to him constantly. To a point where it actually became annoying, like come on let the character develop instead.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

An Unfinished Feeling

Old-world style fantasy with kings and castles, swords and sorcery, including the ability to summon demons from the ether. The story is told in 3rd person, mostly through the perspective of the teenage summoner, the orphaned, adopted son of a village blacksmith. There are humans, dwarfs, elves, gremlins, goblins, and orcs, as well as a confusing variety of animal-like demons, summond from the ether.

Contents include some gory death, but no sex and little or no swearing.

I enjoyed the relationships between comrades and their demons. Also appreciated the characterization of King Harold -- his sense of powerlessness, frustration, and political quandary.

On the down side, the bad guys never really suffer, even at the end of the trilogy, even though they caused a great deal of suffering. Their comeuppance is told in passive tense with only a brief paragraph. Crummy resolution.

The world mythos is never established, even by the end of the trilogy -- the ether is not explained, nor the statues and the ancient buldings and mammoth bones found within that inexplicable space. The ancient pyramid in the jungle is also not explained, nor the prsence of humans thousands of years before recorded history.

Language issues frequently pulled me into the modern pop culture. "Get your game face on" etc. The invention of muskets, rifles, pistols didn't really belong in this world, either.

Narration is very good, but often the voice gets too loud and raspy. It was hard to listen while falling asleep. Kept jerking awake.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Enjoyable read with some frustrations

I have to say that I enjoyed this series as a whole and am fairly satisfied about how this book ended, even of it does feel a bit like some things were left unfinished but at the same time I was a bit frustrated about a few things.

First off, I did not feel like Fletcher really grew as a person despite all the experiences he went through. I swear, it feels almost as if all the major fights/conflicts that occurred were all caused by characters taunting one another or people being impatient. Events like these frustrated me.

Second, for a series about summoner and battle mages, they don't really seem to affect anything. Throughout the series, summons felt like they were more for scouting than actually fighting and despite Fletcher and others being trained as battle mages, they hardly seem to use their abilities because they're almost always out of mana. The orcs were portrayed more like battle mages and summoners than the people were. Maybe its my imagination but the part of the series the most shows battle mages abilities was mostly during the war. Everything else seemed to center solely around the firearms that were produced with occasional close combat occuring.

Lastly, I would have like to see how Fletchers summons grow, what happens with his mother as well as his relationship with Sylvia.

Although, I did list all my frustrations above, that does not mean that I did not enjoy the books. I sped through them because I wanted to know more about the world and was sad when this book ended. I hope that the other can continue writing more stories based on this universe and maybe a book or two with Fletcher again.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

good story

felt rushed though. anticlimactic. some things were buttoned up at the end but i feel like the author grew tired of the series and wanted to get it over with.

that being said i still enjoyed it...i just feel it could have been great.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Reserves running low, rushed story

I have two problems with this great book:

First problem is that Fletcher's reserves are always running low. I don't know if it was a story telling trick so everything wasn't about magic. But it's very dull when every battle he's gets into his reserves run low immediately.

Second I feel the whole trilogy was rushed. We barely learned anything about what happens in Vulcans or any detail how the ether was discovered or demonology history. Then the fact that every time Fletcher was in danger he just Deus Machina his way out of it. Which if done countless times get boring and stale.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

it is ok...but

it felt like the publisher or some sort of circumstances rushed a good story to quick conclusion. A lot of plot could've been stretched to at least one more book, 10 hours+

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

good story but...

This is a good read kind of reminds me of Pokemon lol.

1 main issue and 1 annoyance.

so the big problem with this book and that plagues the majority of books is the main character gets attacked and his friends and family are killed and instead of killing the people who did it he lets them go and then those characters kill more of his friends and family and he lets them go again. The author needs to grow some balls.

The minor annoyance is the summoning leather thing. This is just ridiculous. Apparently people rarely carry summoning leathers on them while having a demon inside them. That's like carrying an automatic machine gun around without any bullets in it. That's just insane

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

rushed

The story was good throughout the books but they all felt rushed. The end of this book was a major let down. there should have been in my opinion 3 more books to complete the story told in these 3

1 of 1 people found this review helpful