Mage's Blood

Starred review from July 1, 2013
After the mage Antonin Meiros created the 300-mile-long Leviathan Bridge, which appears every 13 years at the Moontide, the formerly isolated continents of wealthy Yuros (modeled on Europe) and impoverished Antipoia (modeled on India and the Middle East) have interacted through both trade and two bloody crusades, led by Yuros magi who want to conquer Antipoia. As the next Moontide and crusade approach, turmoil abounds. A famous artifact used to create new mages is missing, and it falls on shunned mage student Alaron Mercer to find it. When the Ankesharan ruling family faces extermination, the mage Elena Anborn, once the family’s enemy, becomes their strongest defender. And Meiros has bought an Antipoian wife, Ramita, hoping their children will bring peace—but her lover, Kazim, wants Meiros dead. This multilayered beginning to the Moontide Quartet plunges readers into a taut network of intrigue and mystery that tightens with each chapter. Hair portrays a stark and beautiful world breaking apart, with both good and evil characters desperate to reshape it through magic, war, and treachery. This strong debut should draw in fantasy readers of all stripes.

July 15, 2013
Sprawling first installment of a promised quartet involving the usual elements of swords and sorcery but with surprising and pleasing twists. New Zealand-based YA author Hair spends a great deal of time here worldbuilding, and the fantastic geography that he conjures is both captivating and improbable. Not least of its disbelief-suspending features is a bridge that rises from the depths of the sea every dozen years, allowing the power- and wealth-seeking Magi to mount crusades in the land across the water. Naturally, the residents of that land don't cotton to the incursions. Neither does every resident of the invading power, whose political complexities are both Byzantine and Mandarin. The Moontide Bridge that adjoins Yuros and Antiopia, some reckon, is the chief cause of their world's miseries. In its sometimes-pedantic explorations of the racial, class and religious differences that separate the two continents, Hair's novel swerves into J. K. Rowling territory, while in its mystical geography and anthropology, it often recalls Frank Herbert's Dune novels. By comparison with these two models, Hair often lays on the fantasy-speak a little thickly: "Most of us have greater aptitude at one or more of the four Classes of the gnosis....My element is fire and I am strongest in Thaumaturgy and hermetic-gnosis." Yet, as the novel unfolds and Hair charts both its physical features and its actors, bearing such resonant names as Antonin Meiros, Belonius Vult, Gurvon Gyle, Ramita Ankesharan and Cymbellea di Regia, it gathers both speed and force. Hair is adept at building characters as well as worlds, and his attention to his female players is welcome in a genre that too often excludes them. The tangles of place names and walk-ons require concentration on the reader's part, but in the end, the story is satisfying enough to make the effort worthwhile. Among the payoffs are plenty of cliffhangers, including one that nicely ushers in the next volume--which fans will await eagerly.

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Starred review from July 1, 2013

Twice before, the Magi of the West, descendants of the 300 followers of Corineus, the first magician, have waged war on the resource-rich lands of the East with limited success. Now, once again, as they have every 12 years, the tides are falling enough to reveal the Leviathan Bridge, originally built to encourage trade and commerce between the peoples of the East and West, and the mages are preparing for a third crusade. Reminiscent of both the Crusades of the Middle Ages and the current tension between Europe and the Middle East, this first volume in a debut four-book series portrays a world remarkably similar to our own with the addition of an elite ruling class comprised of magic-wielding power brokers. This is a world that is writ larger than life with full-scale battle scenes, fierce magical duels, and memorable characters. There is Cera, the 18-year-old regent who pledges herself in marriage to an Eastern potentate to preserve the throne for her underage brother; Ramita, daughter of the East, who is sold to an elderly mage who is desperate for children; Kazim, the boy who loves Ramita enough to renounce his faith and declare shihad against the infidels of the West; and disgraced mage Alaran, who is on everyone's most-wanted list. VERDICT YA author Hair's first foray into adult fantasy is similar in scope to George R.R. Martin's "Ice and Fire" and Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" novels and is sure to please those authors' many fans.--Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage P.L, AK

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013
British author Hair, previously recognized for his young-adult books, has now produced his first adult novel, the first of a planned tetralogy. The lands of Yuros and Antiopa are divided by an impassible strait. Once every 12 years, however, the tides sink to the point that the mage-built Moontide Bridge emerges, and trade is possible between the two lands. Still, armies can also cross the bridge, and the ruling Magi of the Yuros are preparing for another try at conquering Antiopa. And that is just to start. Hair has done a competentif in places derivativejob of world building, and his characters are of a high order. The dubious point is his pacing. His stage is so large and his characters so many that the pacing is outright bouncy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)