I backed the Kickstarter for Outlaw Mage: A Magical School Dropout’s Adventure, and recently read the eBook. So, here’s my review.
My history with Villoso’s books
I read about half of The Wolf of Oren-Yaro. I DNF’d because I lost track of the plot and it didn’t seem worth it to figure out what was going on. However, something about the way Villoso writes her characters impressed me, and I remained interested in her future work.
I’m happy to say that I never got as lost in Outlaw Mage as I did in The Wolf of Oren-Yaro. Once I passed a certain tipping point, the story hooked me and I was flipping (eBook) pages to find out what happens next. So, even if you didn’t enjoy The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, you might enjoy this novel.
A Messy Family
What stays with me most from the novel is Rosha’s family. They sometimes mistreat and neglect each other, but also sometimes come together to support each other.
I’m not saying people should stick with their families always and unconditionally: some families are so toxic it’s better to cut ties. But it’s also heartwarming to see how a dysfunctional family muddles through and sticks together, to some degree, in a time of need. This feels like it was based on a real family.
Readers Don’t Need to Be Familiar With Filipino Culture
Villoso says this novel is very much inspired by her Filipino heritage and her experience as a Filipino teenager in Canada. Other early readers of Filipino heritage have said it resonated with them because they recognized their own culture within this story.
I’m not knowledgeable about Filipino culture, so that aspect of the novel probably missed me. However, the novel works even if you lack that cultural background.
That said, even I felt the rawness of Rosha’s feels as she tried to fit herself into a system which had been set up to exploit people like her, not nurture their potential. That sincerity is what got me through the early section of the book until other plot things strung me along.
Do I Recommend This Book?
I’m on the fence on this one. I was engaged most of the way through the book, and if it weren’t for [spoiler thing] which happens at the end, I’d recommend this without reservation. But it has the spoiler thing. So, if you find the premise compelling, I recommend trying the novel. Despite how much I disliked how the execution of the ending, I’ll also attempt to read the next novel in the series when it’s available.
So, that’s the end of the spoiler-free review. If you want to know about the ‘spoiler thing’ I just mentioned and you don’t mind spoilers, read on.
The Spoiler Thing
I consider it unfair to spoil books which haven’t been fully released yet (the printed copies aren’t available yet, not even for Kickstarter backers). However, this is something which I think readers should’ve been told about in the early chapters. So, I’m going to spoil.
One of the last chapters reveals the true reason Rosha quit in the middle of the finals and became an outlaw mage: she’d been injured in such as way that her magical abilities were decreasing, and if she’d completed all the magical spells necessary for the finals it might’ve killed her.
As a reader, I felt cheated. Rosha knew this from the very beginning, yet she kept this hidden from readers.
Yes, in retrospect, there were a few hints, but not nearly enough. Even if Rosha was in total denial (and she wasn’t, at the end it’s clear she had some conscious awareness of her problem), the foreshadowing needed to be heavier for the reader.
The suspense throughout the novel would’ve also been higher if the reader had known that using too much magic in a short period of time could kill Rosha. I can’t think of any good storytelling reason to withhold this from the reader. Maybe as a shocking twist? Well, this ‘shock twist’ was a flop for me.
The Notes Which Do Not Fit 