Magicians and their powers were kept in check by the magekillers, women who were immune to magic and had the authority to kill any magician who attempted to take control. Kane was the Archmage, a superior magician who practiced wilder magic than the staid gentlemen of the Magicians Hall. His views on developing the magic powers of women placed him at odds with the other magicians and the magekillers, who were female. Into this combustible society comes the mysterious Alar, immune to magic and believed to be a magekiller yet she keeps her distance from them and forges an alliance with Kane.
THE MAGEKILLER’s plot moves at a brisk pace from almost the first page and sustains the action until the last climactic pages. The duplicity on all sides in this story are focused on Kane and Alar as they attempt to start a school of magic for both genders. This is enough to destabilize the uneasy truce in Varland and place the entire school in danger. The complexity of the story is illuminated with a series of flashbacks to a previous century where the divisions first arose due to power politics and the misogyny of the male magicians. The dialog is crisp and the characters are believable with the exception of a mysterious magekiller in the prolog. There are two prologs in this book that could easily have been shortened, with the excess explained in flashback, as done with other complex parts of the story.
The climax arrives nearly at the end of the story and there are some loose ends that have not been dealt with by the last pages. However, the general direction of the story indicates that there is a second book that will follow. With the groundwork already placed by THE MAGEKILLERS, this is the beginning of an outstanding series.
THE MAGEKILLER is a well-written fantasy about the dangers of combining magic with politics.
Reviewed by Ed Bennett for IndieReader.