Archmages’s Ire

By  Pirateaba

By now, anyone who knows me probably also knows I’m a big fan of The Wandering Inn. I recently finished listening to the 18th book in the series, and I’d like to share my thoughts on it. 

Eighteen books is a lot, and even then, this part is neither a beginning nor an ending. Rather, Archmage’s Ire covers just shy of 20 chapters in the middle of the series’ 7th volume. It starts out easy by reconnecting with some characters we haven’t seen in a while, and it ends in an exceptionally dramatic way, but there’s no meaningful connection between the beginning of the book and the end. To get the full story experience of the 7th volume, one needs to consider it as a complete unit. 

Perhaps (most likely), it’s wrong to think of Archmage’s Ire as a novel. Perhaps it’s better to think of it as a collection of interconnected, overlapping tales. We have a variety of themes and stories, and a large cast of characters, and the only thing some of these stories have in common is that they take place in the same world and at the same time.

Sometimes the characters of one of these stories make contact with someone from another story, but on the whole, they’re doing their own thing.

As a novel, Archmage’s Ire doesn’t really work, but viewed as a collection of stories with a shared connection to something bigger, it makes a lot more sense. So, instead of trying to review the entire book, I’ll pick some of the stories that make it up and poke at them a bit.

There will be spoilers.

The Fifth Wall

This story arch covers three chapters and totals nearly ten hours of audio, meaning it’s more than a fifth of the entire book. It’s kind of a big deal.

I remember from when I read this part of the series on the web that I enjoyed it a lot. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t work as well a second time. I normally don’t reread a books at all, but The Wandering Inn is the exception to that rule. It’s become something of a comfort thing these last few years for me. 

What happens at the fifth wall isn’t comforting. It’s very far from comforting, and what’s worse, it ends up being completely pointless and achieves nothing. I think this is what makes this story arc so much harder to enjoy the second time around. 

Even so, it’s still a good read, and we get to see aspects of the world we haven’t seen before. It may not be notable to first time readers, but the Fifth Wall arc is a great showcase for the power of administrative classes, here represented by Bastion-General Quiteil. The impact his non-combat skills have on the situation are staggering, and showing them off to the reader helps support the development of similar characters, like Salii and Allric, both of whom appear in different arcs in this book.

The Riots in Invrisil

This is a fairly short arc, but it’s the kind of event that has a knock on effect on a lot of other things down the line. Also, it’s pure TWI. We’ve got idiots doing stupid things, powerful people doing awesome things, and a diverse group of characters coming together to save the day in an unorthodox fashion. It’s fun, fast-fast paced, and just the right kind of cheesy.

The Yellow Rivers

Geneva Scala has been driving herself into the ground trying to fight the Yellow Rivers disease, and in this book, we get a major breakthrough when it turns out that The Inn has access to penicillin. 

It’s the kind of “reveal” that you can see coming from a mile away, but it doesn’t matter because what you really want is seeing the characters freak out when it happens. You’re not surprised yourself, but it’sgreat to share in the excitement of those who just had the weight of the world lifted from their shoulders. 

This, along with the Riots in Invrisil are events that help propel Erin and The Wandering Inn onto the world stage. More and more people in positions of power will start paying attention to the Inn, and it changes the scope of the story. 

What begun with Erin serving spaghetti and blue fruit juice is slowly growing into something no one involved could have imagined. It’s been a long ride, and it’s getting longer, but arcs like this one are the rewards we get for sticking with the story.

What I’ll whine about

I gotta whine about something, right? For this one, it ties back to what I wrote at the beginning, about the overall progression of the book. Sure, there are a lot of interesting story arcs, and some great events, but with a few exceptions, it’s mostly just progression of ongoing stories arcs or introductions of new ones. It’s a very middle-of-the-story book. Few plot threads are tied up.

The archmage in the book’s title is only a small part at the end of the book, and that too is more of a beginning than a conclusion.

What I’ll gush about

From a lore perspective, there’s a lot going on here. The story itself may not reach many turning points, but we learn quite a bit about the world. We get to visit Wistram and Rhir. Erin’s making light-eating bread and crushing riots. Mrsha learns about druids. We follow Klbkch and Anand to the Hivelands, and we see Kevin start developing a bicycle.

We’re also introduced to Turnscales – again. Turnscales have been mentioned before, but this book takes it to a point when Rose tries to get the Players of Celum to put on Romeo and Romeo (instead of Romeo and Juliet). This isn’t so much a story arc as it is an entire theme making space for itself. It’s been there before, but here is where it starts to flex its muscles and demand attention, and I’m here for it.

Final Words

Archmage’s Ire doesn’t do much as far as story progression goes, but it does a lot when it comes to setting things in motion and exploring the world of The Wandering Inn.

Find The Wandering Inn on Goodreads.