Miriam Greystone

Many interesting ideas but this author has no clue how to craft a proper story.
The writing itself is actually pretty good but the book is full of many of the typical rookie storytelling mistakes. It's things like expecting the reader to care about a character enough to endure a 10-page melodrama about a character that had half a page of page time in total.
It's the classic mistake of wanting an emotional payoff without putting in the work of making the reader care first.
Subtlety isn't a strong suit of this author either. I frequently encounter much worse offenders in terms of missing subtlety but it's still not great. You can see most setups from miles away which gave the entire story a very heavy-handed feel which, again, is a mistake typical for amateurish writing.
The book fails to properly convey situations of urgency. I have seen worse examples of this but I still found it very off-putting how characters have these long, drawn-out, and unnecessary conversations in life-or-death situations. Here the audiobook really helped a lot because the narrator did a great job at injecting the missing urgency into her narration voice and I imagine this might be a lot more off-putting in text.
The author seems to have trouble looking at her story from the reader's perspective which can also be a good indicator for unhelpful beta readers.

But even with all these storytelling weaknesses aside, the plot just isn't very deep.
This is one of those rare cases where I think more pages would have made this book quite a bit better.
There are many radically different situations the MC goes through, most of which feel insignificant and kind of pointless because none of them get the page time necessary to get deep enough into any of them for them to feel like more than some sort of plot requirement or an interlude or an introduction or whatever other shortish section of a text you can think of.
I am not quite sure if the lack of depth comes from the attempt of writing a tighter story or because there is actually nothing behind any of it. But it honestly feels like there is more world-building behind at least some of it which was left out in the name of brevity.

Let me give a few concrete examples.
I really loved the introductory setting of her as a doctor in her day job and also for supernaturals at night and the tension from her not being able to use her healing magic because secrecy reasons. This was the first kind of reveal early on in the book but it was incredibly obvious that this is what the author was going for since page one which made the dramatic reveal just feel heavy-handed. I would have loved to have more time getting to know her within this job and the daily struggles of working two jobs like this and the huge variety of things a doctor would have to deal with such a diverse set of clients. Instead, she spills the beans literally in the second case we see her treat ever. And even that this was going to happen in that particular case was obvious from miles away.
And this is the pattern I was trying to describe earlier. A really good setup that on its own would be enough for an entire book, then gets rushed through in a few pages without any subtlety, and off we go to the next wildly different thing. It's not just a scatter-brained idea explosion. It follows a clear story thread but it doesn't stop at the individual stations for long enough. And to be clear, I am a very impatient reader. I like my stories fast-paced (but not necessarily action-packed). This story doesn't feel too fast. It feels too superficial.

The one big final reveal was decently done. It was foreshadowed and I considered it as an option but it was very much not the only one.

Enough ranting which really only serves to reflect and to get my thoughts in order.… (más)

The story line was terrific. There are SO many different facets to this story, woven together SO well, I couldn't put it down. I told others who also excitedly bought this book, and book 1 of the series, where we learn Rowan's a leshy, a mythological figure from Slavic mythology. I'm now reading book 1 to fill in some of the blanks. I'm intrigued on what further adventures will ensue in book 3 et al.

On the bad side, this book really needed you to read book 1 to understand important details. Many book series easily explain some facts from a previous book with a simple sentence or two. If you read the previous book, you nod knowingly; if you didn't, the sentence means enough to get the idea without having to read book 1.… (más)

Winter’s Mage is the second book of the Outcast Mage series by Miriam Greystone. I enjoyed the first book of the series and the second even more. This book was refreshingly different. The main character Asa/Amy and her love interest Rowan are able to live different lives and follow different plots without relying on each and then the other brings the two plots together seamlessly. This book also does a wonderful job keeping me on the edge of my seat with all the plot twists. All the characters, including the minor ones are amazing and written well. My only complaint would be that I would like to hear more about Rowan. I am looking forward to the third book of the Outcast Mage series.… (más)