Sorcerer's Legacy by Janny Wurts
~The Quick Review~
While technically well written, constant (contrived) tension-mounting, poor pacing, and poorly developed characters make Sorcerer’s Legacy a tedious read. The rushed and infuriating climax—paired with a ‘happily ever after tone’—only makes it worse. While it pains me to say it, there’s nothing I can recommend in this novel.
~The Real Review~
Elienne, a grieving widow, has a choice to make. She can remain the captive of the general of the invading army that murdered her husband, or she can let a Sorcerer whisk her across time and space to become the consort of a Prince who will be killed if he doesn’t produce an heir. She alone is the key to saving his life.
As much as anyone with their back against the wall can choose anything, Elienne chooses to become the Prince’s consort. Unhappy but determined, she tries to make the best of this unpleasant alternative to her previous life—and then the Sorcerer dies, thrusting her into a world of deadly court intrigue where, with few exceptions, she cannot tell the difference between friend and foe.
Elienne is belligerent. In her original world, this is a strong character trait. Her spitting in the face of the man who might let her live (a terrible life) if she behaves herself is a fist pump moment in that “live free or die—don’t degrade your humanity for tyrants who will end up killing you anyway” sort of way.
But things take a turn after being ripped through time and space.
Her proposed consort-ship with the prince is unexpected, and the court is suspicious. Being an outsider puts her case at a disadvantage; the fact that she’s also not royal only further complicates things. She knows she must be on her best behavior, sterling and without reproach, to ensure nothing gets in the way of becoming the Prince’s consort. Otherwise, he will be executed, and she will have absolutely nothing in this strange, new world.
Then the door to the chambers opens.
The old man leading the discussion is obnoxious. Of course he is! He’s an old courtly man and part of the faction who wants to see the Prince dead. Within seconds Elienne essentially calls everyone dumbfucks, then insults the speaker’s manhood.
Some might call this “strong,” but I find it obnoxious and alienating. How is a grown woman who lived a hard life unable to control any of her impulses? If her outburst were emotional—a surprise burst of rage and sorrow and despair from having watched her husband murdered only to be thrust into another’s bed—I’d excuse her. But no. Her outburst is on behalf of the prince. The very prince who she would have helped the most by keeping quiet.
At that moment I knew I was in trouble. Elienne had only become less sympathetic the more I read, and that’s not a great trajectory for a protagonist.
Perhaps worse than that, though, is the plotting and the pacing.
For the first two-thirds of the book, the danger is always one-upped. It goes something like. Oh no! Elienne is in danger! Phew, Elienne somehow managed to escape, except OMG THE DANGER SHE ESCAPED SOMEHOW BEGAT GREATER DANGER. Thankfully, she escaped that danger, too, except OMG HERE’S A NEW DANGER STRAIGHT OUT OF NOWHERE HOW WILL SHE—oh, cool. She’s fine. Except…
Sorcerer’s Legacy isn’t a procedural drama or an investigative noir or whathaveyou where you expect constantly one-upping hooks. This style feels out of place, like the author doesn’t believe that their story is good enough to stand on its own, even for a page or two, without some impending sense of doom forcing you to turn the pages. Also, since these hooks don’t have much nuance, they feel contrived. The majority of them could disappear and the trajectory of the book would stay the same.
Another issue with endlessly mounting tension is we never really get to connect with Elienne as a person. Who is she underneath all that blusterous rage and sinking despair? I have no idea. It makes it hard to root for her, and harder to feel invested in what’s happening.
Her constant state of fight, flight, or—eventually—despondent rage also means that she doesn’t really grow or change. Characters usually have an arc, and while Elienne technically does have one, the fact that she never knows a moment’s peace prevents it from shining through with authenticity.
So tension is mounting and mounting. Elienne is in active danger. The prince is in active danger. Shit’s bad and it’s always gonna be—until the threat is contained with 100 pages to go.
While Sorcerer’s Legacy does leave a thread dangling that implies that the dam will break, there lacks a sense of intrigue. There’s no nuance where Elienne is watching the crack in the dam grow, trying to warn the others, but everyone just sees that the damn is standing and goes about their business.
Nope. We’re all just sitting with Elienne waiting for the (seemingly solid) dam to inevitably break because with as much time is left in the book, it has to.
Now, I won’t spoil the ending … yet. But it’s rough. Elienne’s emotional arc, which is barely present and about as nuanced as my dog’s love of chocolate, comes to a close with head-spinning rapidity. An emotional arc should make me feel something other than “seriously?”
The story arc has a lot more to it, but it’s arguably the worst ending of any book I’ve ever read. The Time of the Dark trilogy and Missing Man and all those other books that roiled me up in the last few pages have nothing on Sorcerer’s Legacy.
Strangely, the worst part of both endings is how they worked together. In the final stretch, the events of the story arc are used to emphasize the weight of the emotional arc. As I was never emotionally invested in Elienne and didn’t feel like Elienne grew as a person—for reasons already stated—this undermined any goodwill I might have had to the story without fixing any of the problems I had with Elienne.
Now you might ask why I finished Sorcerer’s Legacy if I have pretty much nothing good to say about it. It’s a fair question, and to start with I’ll throw the book the only positive I can find: it’s technically well-written. If it weren’t, I’d have never finished.
But the real reason I kept reading was that I smelled some bullshit and I had to figure out what, exactly, it was. The never-ending tension wasn’t what I sensed, nor was it the weird pacing or the lack of emotional growth from the characters. There was something heinous lurking right out of sight, and I had to know what it was. I eventually found it, it’s all wrapped up in the book’s climax, so I can’t spell it out to you without spoiling the novel, but it’s a doozy.
Spoiler version:
Elienne is one-day pregnant* when her husband is murdered and her land seized by an invading army. Ielond, a sorcerer, visits her in her cell and tells her that she’ll be raped by the invading general. If she insults him, he’ll kill her. If she holds her tongue, the general will claim her husband’s child as his own.
But there’s an alternative.
In his kingdom, the prince is in danger. Made sterile by black magic, he will soon face the executioner’s block for failing to produce an heir. Only black magic can return the prince’s virility, but that requires both black magic and the blood of a dead virgin.
Having searched time and space, Ielond discovered an alternative. If Elienne returns with the Sorcerer and becomes the prince’s consort, her child would appear to be that of the prince’s. Elienne agrees, exclusively for the sake of her husband’s child.
Except, alas. Since Ielond traversed time to find her, he cannot be allowed to exist twice at the same time. The second he returns her to the right point of his timeline, he dies. He tells her, though, that she can trust Kennaird, his apprentice, and the sorcerer Taroith.
The prince is nice and Elienne immediately begins to worry. She just lost her husband. She doesn’t want to fall in love with the prince. For page and pages, the story alternates between her hating the prince because she might love him and dodging attempts on her life by people who want to see the prince dead.
The villain, who caused the Prince’s sterility and the constant attempts on Elienne’s life, is eventually captured and jailed, but Elienne is still worried. It was prophesized that she will die an honest woman … which means that her son by her husband cannot end up inheriting the kingdom.
This means the jailing of the villain does little to reassure her.
She tells no one of the prophecy, and when her son is born, she only becomes more afraid. She never lets the baby—named Ielond after the Sorcerer—out of her sight. The only person she truly trusts or loves is a teenaged girl named Minksa who was abused by the villain for her entire sad life.
Remember Kennaird? I hardly did, too, but he was Ielond’s apprentice and someone Ielond told Elienne explicitly that she should trust. Anyway, Kennaird re-appears in the story and is examined by Taroith—the head Sorcerer—to determine the next steps in his training.
Something is amiss, though. Kennaird is fundamentally unfit to be a sorcerer. Confused, Taroith re-reads a cryptic note left for him by Ielond. He now understands it to say that though Kennaird is unfit, he will serve an important purpose and must be left alone. Trusting his old friend, Taroith lets Kennaird go.
Kennaird returns to his rooms a bit worried about the examination and finds a strange ring. It’s embellished with a demon and obviously evil, but Kennaird puts it on anyway and is immediately possessed by the villain.
Now, remember that Ielond told Eilenne that she could and should trust Kennaird. Remember also that Ielond traveled time and space and could see the future.
Elienne grants Kennaird access to her quarters because of Ielond’s advice. He tries to kill baby Ielond but is stopped and killed. The ring of possession drops to the floor.
First off, what the fuck. Ielond kept Kennaird around … to try to murder Elienne’s baby? This POS took Kennaird on as a child and raised him, knowing the whole time his life would be sacrificed in a failed attempt to kill a baby.
Ielond is the worst.
So Kennaird’s dead, but the ring is on the floor. Minksa, the poor abused teenager who only found love and acceptance a few weeks ago picks it up, puts it on, and—because Elienne trusts her whole-heartedly—is able to murder baby Ielond.
So Ielond needed Kennaird as a stepping stool to making an abused teenaged girl murder the baby of the only person nice to her. Are we sure Ielond isn’t the real villain of the story?
Then, so distraught that she did something so horrible, Minksa suicides … conveniently leaving virgin blood behind. Taroith, essentially, possesses the villain and makes him wield black magic to restore the prince’s virility. This world apparently has moral loopholes aplenty because for some reason this doesn’t stain Taroith’s soul.
Furthermore, everyone involved soon realizes that Ielond knew all of this would happen. He knew Kennaird and Minksa would die. He knew that Elienne’s son would be murdered. He knew that all of these things together would add up to a prince capable of producing a legitimate heir. And nobody seems to think anything poorly of Ielond.
Then Elienne—supposedly grieving the murder of her child born of her murdered and very loved husband—spends a day in the woods riding a horse, ruminating on what’s happened.
“Though [Elienne] would regret life long the loss of her child, she accepted with the Sorcerer might have sanctioned the sacrifice in view of the greater good.”
No.
A) That’s not how a grieving mother would act/think … unless she’s a sociopath.
B) Ielond stacked the deck so that her baby would be murdered. Worse, information is never imparted of a nature like “I tried to find an alternative, but this was the least horrible I could find. What I’ve done is so unconscionable I deign not even ask for your forgiveness or understanding.”
Nope. He did something utterly fucking awful, withheld information, pumped Elienne up with false hope, ruined one innocent life, got two innocents murdered, all so that his beloved prince would be able to have a biological child. Because seriously, it seems that without Kennaird’s ineptitude the book could have ended with Elienne and the prince and baby Ielond happy.
Instead, the book ends with Elienne and the prince in love and happy about a future where they can make a baby together … right after Elienne’s baby is bludgeoned to death in front of her and a tragic girl suicides over the guilt.
What the fuck.
* I know “one-day pregnant” isn’t a thing, but in this instance time-traveller Ielond knows that the sex she had with her husband the day before will end in a pregnancy, and I couldn’t come up with a pithier way to say that than “one-day pregnant.”
Cover art by: Unknown :(
