The Wizard's Promise by Cassandra Rose Clarke Series: The Hannah Duology #1
Published by Strange Chemistry on May 6th 2014
Goodreads
All Hanna Euli wants is to become a proper witch – but unfortunately, she’s stuck as an apprentice to a grumpy fisherman. When their boat gets caught up in a mysterious storm and blown wildly off course, Hanna finds herself further away from home than she’s ever been before.
As she tries to get back, she learns there may be more to her apprentice master than she realized, especially when a mysterious, beautiful, and very non-human boy begins following her through the ocean, claiming that he needs Hanna’s help.
Little disclaimer: I am a terrible blogger and I did not read the series that comes before this one. The good news is that I didn’t need to read the series that comes before to understand it and that I now want to read The Assassin’s Curse even more! (so I say while this is probably somewhat unprofessional of me-it did turn out for the best).
Ever since I read the synopsis for The Wizard’s Promise, I KNEW I had to pick up a copy! Wizards.Magic.Wind.Mystery.Pirates. This book had everything I wanted! And I liked the main character, huzzah!
The book starts off with Hannah. Basically Hannah is a fisherman’s apprentice with a super awesome former-pirate as a mom. Her mom tells her stories about her time working on The Nadir (this is where The Assassin’s Curse series comes in!). While I was somewhat oblivious to the references, I still understood what was happening and I definitely appreciated the details. The first half of the book was somewhat slow with little action but the second half was much better paced. I will note that the book took me a while to get through but I’m glad I ended up finishing it.
Hannah is basically the ideal protagonist. As a fisherman’s apprentice, she gets to practice her wind magic in the hopes that she will one day get to go train in the elusive city of Jandaver (if that is the correct spelling..). Honestly, I found Hannah a refreshing change to the slew of YA protagonists we often see. Sure, she didn’t realize her full potential until later in the book but she had a clear sense of who she was and what she liked doing. She was also super brave and get this: DIDN’T NEED A BOY TO SAVE HER! For me, I found that really awesome. YA tends to have a lot of boy-needs-to-save-girl action and I’m glad that The Wizard’s Promise was not a partaker.
Furthermore, I thought the world-building was phenomenal. While I am terrible with geography, I understood the basic lay of the land (so to speak) and I feel like I understand the setting extremely well. Tied into the world-building were heavy themes of magic which I adored. I loved reading Hannah’s use of magic and all the mysteries that go along with it. I could really visualize the large role that magic plays in character’s lives and the importance of it in the plot.
Also, there was no romance! While I do see a certain character ending up as a love interest later in the duology, there was no definite romance. I found this really refreshing and interesting. The story really focused on Hannah’s journey versus. the people she meets along the way. Oh, this reminds me: the side characters are pretty awesome too. I loved Finnur and Abseda and they were awesome and super adorable!
Overall, The Wizard’s Promise was a promising (hehe) start to what I’m sure will be an interesting duology! While the pacing was slow in the beginning of the book, I’m excited for the next book in The Hannah Duology and I’ll be eagerly waiting for its release.
