The Journals of Evander Tailor series has been a guilty pleasure favorite of mine for a while. It’s the type of fantasy I wish I would have had as a kid: fun fight scenes with a nerdy gay lead. Life has been pretty hectic recently, so I went in on the audiobooks to listen to as I rip up carpets and contemplate whether I have the skill to try and refinish the floors with my pitiful DIY skills (the answer is definitely not, at least right now).
Read if Looking For: fun enchanting, asshat nobility, drama-free relationships
Avoid if Looking For: careful prose, confident characters, books free from tropes
Elevator Pitch:
Evan is in his second year of magic school. After killing the king with the help of a Fae Queen, he finds himself with lots of eyes on him as he scrambles for power that will keep him safe. However, the year will bring a lot more than schoolwork after a visit to a neighboring country clues him in that there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye with the kingdom. Something is terribly wrong, and, let’s be honest, it’s probably the nobility’s fault.
What Worked for Me
I’ll brush over most of the stuff I liked about book 1 (nerdy magic, fun fight scenes, quality gay rep) because none of that has changed. This book is just enjoyable and a little bit mindless. Evan dives more deeply into divination magic in this book, which I don’t feel like gets a ton of screen time in books. It’s fun to see crafting and battle prep executed so well. If you liked book 1, you’ll enjoy book 2 even more.
Specifically, Begley does a phenomenal job of managing classic mid-book challenges. Oftentimes, authors get so lost in expanding the scope of the story that they lose track of what made book 1 special. The Diviner doesn’t have that problem. Instead, Evan’s journey into the ‘big plot’ of the series feels incredibly natural. His growing knowledge matches nicely with the school aspects of the story, and with the subplots focusing on his partner Osheen (whose father is one of the most powerful nobles in the country). And, while it very much feels like our lead duo have plot armor – not for a single page will you believe either of them is going to die – I think Begley is successful at finding consequences that are interesting and push the story forward in interesting directions. The ending in particular, always leaves me very excited for book three.
It’s possible that this is just my relative distaste for cosmic horror speaking (not that book 1 was ever truly a horror book) but I think this is a direct upgrade from book 1, in large part due to Begley’s growing skill as a writer. We also get to see more queer rep. It’s mostly incidental and background-oriented because the book is so focused on our m/m lead duo, but we get to see trans and lesbian rep in a casual normalized manner.
What Didn’t Work for Me
The audiobook format has really hammered in for me that, as a technical writer, Begley has a lot to work on. This has some classic progression fantasy issues in terms of sentence-level writing quality.
In Conclusion: Fun progression fantasy featuring item crafting and a gay lead
- Characters – 3
- Worldbuilding – 3
- Craft – 2
- Themes – 3
- Enjoyment – 5
Marked for Plot 