The Wilder

by B.J. Beach

“The lingering stink of previous occupants didn’t bother Grub. That particular blend of odours was something with which he had become familiar during his short life. He’d grown accustomed to a variety of malodorous whiffs and stenches over the last few years, and recognised most of them. There was even a bizarre comfort in the skittering and squeaking of the rats who shared his cell. He envied them their freedom, their ability to cope with enclosed spaces and confining walls, their security in the knowledge that they had a way out.”

Thus are we introduced to Karryl, A.K.A. ‘Grub’, a Wilder, someone with untrained, precocious and quite precarious magical talents. Grub is sent to train under the king’s magician Symon, a fortuitous piece of luck, were it not for the thought (lurking in Symon’s mind) that maybe greater forces were manipulating the situation.

Karryl is special... perhaps he is even the almost mythical ‘Mage-Prime’, spoken of in the legends that remain from the ‘Power War of the Mages’ of almost a thousand years ago... But, that’s for the future, first he must be trained, and training a Wilder doesn't go quite as smoothly as Symon had hoped.

Join Symon and Karryl and their friends and enemies, in these exciting and magical adventures...

Genres: Fantasy

408 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2014

Reviews

[Teresa Carrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

YA fantasy. Coming of age, orphan street boy turns out to be an extremely powerful magician. I enjoyed the first half of the book. The second half felt rushed. Still deciding whether I want to read the sequel.

Edit: gave up on the second book

[xenofixus · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good read but it could have been better. There were at times massive time skips with only a few glancing sentences to describe what happened. Near the end of the book a character was mentioned with the tag line 'which really came as no surprise to anyone'...except for the reader as we had not seen this character since she was breifly introduced much earlier.

Honestly I feel this book is a 3.5, not a 4. Too much time was glossed over with little to no explanation. Finding out that Karryl and Aenys were engaged came as quite a surprise considering we had no inkling at all that they were even romantically involved. A good portion of the book focused on a secondary character and while I wasn't as interested in him as Karryl, that portion ended with almost no conclusion, just inferred from what other characters discovered. Karryl goes from being completely inexperienced with magic to seeming to have near the same control as his master almost instantaneously thanks to a massive time skip.

Little things like this bring the rating down. Overall, it is an interesting book but I feel like the author rushed certain aspects of the book more so than necessary. Also the small fact that the story is called 'The Wilder' but Karryl's wild magic plays almost no part at all in the plot.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was good. The Wilder has interesting plot lines and foreshadowing, although it could do with a good line edit - far too much detail in certain areas, and less in areas which matter to the story.
Also, the last 10% felt like it was excerpts from a sequel. There was a lot of jumping about and things going on which the reader has no clue about, but the characters all seem to understand well. With a basic edit and a rewrite of the ending, making it more of an ending than it is as it stands, this could be a lot better. Worth reading, and I hope the future instalments have been looked at in more depth.