In Elena’s world words have power over life and death—but none more so than hers.As the daughter of shopkeepers, Elena has always known that the mysteries of reading and writing are closed to her. Only the mageborn can risk harnessing the power unleashed from putting pen to paper. Until Elena discovers an impossible new ability and joins the elite ranks of the mages.But with the kingdom at war, … with the kingdom at war, the authorities can’t agree if Elena is an asset, or a threat they need to eliminate. Thrust into the unknown world of the Royal Academy without friends or experience, Elena will need all of her wits, strength, and new power to carve a place for herself.
Except as the threats to both Elena and the kingdom mount, wits and strength won’t be enough. Elena will have to turn to new friends and an enigmatic prince to unlock the mysterious potential of her words—because both her life and her people depend on her becoming stronger than she ever dreamed possible.
If you enjoy strong heroines, fantasy worlds, adventure, intrigue, and romance, then try the Spoken Mage series now. Available for a reduced price in this complete series set.
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These books kept getting better and better. Clean with a slow burn romance and a world with plenty going on!
This fantasy series really blew me away and kept me on the edge of my seat with every book. The characters were awesome as well as the world building.
It was clean and packed with action, suspense, romance, and strong characters.
Needless to say, I loved it and would recommend it to not only teens, but anyone who enjoys a good fantasy or if you’re like me and fantasy isn’t typically your thing, I think you should still definitely check it out.
A beautiful fantasy read, I loved the book (or 5 book series), it reads like one book. and a wondeful; one at that.
Elena is just sixteen when her father’s store comes under attack, and the crowd freezes when she screams, “Stop.” Literally freezes, unable to move. Days later red mages show up and take Elena off to the Academy, a school for mages. She makes friends with Coralie, Saffron, Lucas, Finnian, Aminta, and Clarence. She also has enemies, elite students who can’t accept Elena as a commonborn who doesn’t know how to read. The Academy is a four year school, and each book contains the story of a different year. Elena goes from inept to the most powerful mage in the world. This book targets a young adult reader, focusing on issues that teens typically face: trouble in school, making boyfriends or girlfriends, what to wear, etc. but the action scenes where the teens train in combat or visit the war’s front lines will get pulses racing.
The storyline is not new – commoner is discovered to have ability limited to nobility, said commoner is forcibly inducted into nobility, royalty develops interest in said former commoner, chaos ensues. I find Elena to have and insist on using a refreshing amount of common sense as she navigates the various shoals, hidden and unhidden, politically and socially. I also find Elena to be refreshingly human (not as ideal as a vestal virgin statue) in that she is inversely snobbish, has a tendency to speak before she thinks and tends to see only what is directly in front of her until hit over the head with a metaphorical hammer. Despite her flaws or perhaps because her flaws, Elena ends up sweeping her noble academy mates with her as she steps out to change her world – hopefully for the better. Elena is proof that a single person, a single female person, can change the world even as the world changes her.
A coming of age story with a different world setting. The world is an interesting place and the society is well realized. The wall of separation between the common and aristocratic parts of society actually has a purpose in this world – to write a word without the ability to control the magic released is catastrophic to any around. Imagine if in our first year of school, writing the word cat on the neatly lined sheet could destroy the student and everyone around them for several blocks! It would not take long before those who didn’t have a mage ancestor would shun reading and writing. Add to that the human tendency to look down on those who can’t do something one takes for granted in oneself and a stratified society is inevitable. The commoner is not less intelligent, and to be successful their minds had to be far more resourceful – they have to conduct business without the ability to read and write. There were no records to look back on to see how your great grandfather handled an unusual circumstance, so you had to solve it fresh every time.
The characters are well-rounded. The author did a good job of giving the major characters a consistent world-view and their actions and words reflected those views. When someone changes, there is an obvious catalyst to explain the change. Growth was apparent on all the characters and their actions reflected those changes with the human tendency to back-slide to comfortable habits added to make it real.
I wouldn’t call them unpredictable, but they did surprise me a time or two. Otherwise I would call them comfort reads.
An excellent series I’ve recommended to friends.
I could not put this story down.
The ‘new adult’ book series set in a fantasy world was pretty entertaining. I enjoy UF, and this does read a lot like UF. Also, like the dozens of other ‘academy’ type group books, it has a lot of the young adult angst stuff, but that’s (thankfully) a small part of the book. The ending was interesting in some ways, but predictable. If you enjoyed The Culling Trials by Shannon Mayer and K.F. Breen, you’ll like this.
OMG, I would give these books 10 stars out of 5 if I could. These have been the most fun books I have read in the last few years. These books are what a better and less “kiddie” Harry Potter wants to be. I think so highly of this author. I’m cheap, and if there are another further set of these books, I would pay the big bucks for them.
I really enjoyed this series- good writing with original script and I found myself rooting for the main characters.
Fairly intelligent well thought out mostly, unpredictable.enjoyed it a lot. YA.