Wildly Crafty

Villenspell: City of Wizards
By Crystalwizard
Published by Cyberwizard Productions


Villenspell: City of Wizards picks up immediately after Wizard’s Bane (2004), the first book in the series ends.  It follows Dale and his misfit band of travelers who are fated to save the world on the immediate quest to remove a binding spell and works toward setting up more events that will come into play in later books.  The group stops in Villenspell, a large magical city and home of the world’s wizard’s college, to get Jarl freed from his spell, restock supplies and rest. While they are there, Dale and Jarl manage to save the city from certain disaster, break up the local assassin’s guild and discover the identity of their archnemesis.

This book has moments of maturity, especially the scene where Dale is suffering over his growing attraction to Aerline who he thinks loves another, but the majority reads like a teen novel.   Perhaps this is because more and more of the developing characters are teenagers.  The author would have been better served with a little less character development and a little more action.  Most of the story takes place in the city, shopping and eating and horsing around, and very little goes on that relates to the underlying quest of “saving the world from certain doom” until the last few chapters.

It is as though this book was written merely as filler, a way for three of the main characters from the previous book to pick up apprentices, and for one of the original party to break away from the group. Some of the events are interesting, but the lack of action is disappointing and anticlimactic.  If the last few chapters are any indication though, it looks like the action is stepped up in book three Wizards and Wanderers (2006).

Even the addition of the new characters gets predictable after a time, except for the one which grows out of a plate of pancake syrup, each is saved from a bad situation and has to take a binding oath of loyalty which he or she does without question.  An expedient way to move the plot along to be sure, but not entirely realistic.  All in all though, readers who enjoyed the first novel will find much to work with here. Crystalwizard has written some interesting and engaging characters which keep the pages turning and the reader wanting to know how it all ends.

Reviewed by Sarra Borne for Front Street Reviews.