The Wretched of Muirwood Review

Title: The Wretched of Muirwood
Author: Jeff Wheeler
Date Purchased: 3/7/2015
Price Paid: $1.99
Date Finished: 1/29/2021
Rating: 4/5

I started logging books on my Goodreads profile back in 2012, and did a small amount of “backfilling” my list, but really just concentrated on logging books I read from then on out. As of this moment there are 348 books that I’ve marked as “Read” and 259 of the are categorized as “fantasy-sci-fi” by my tags.

(This also means that I’m now really disappointed that I lumped those in together. I kinda wish I’d split fantasy and science fiction apart, but I think I was worried about the slippery slope that might lead to with more granular classifications and whatnot.)

When one has read as many fantasy books as I have, you tend to get a bit more critical about one specific element: magic. Most fantasy novels will touch on magic in some form, and the ones that truly stand out in my mind are the magic systems that are different from the rest. Thankfully, The Wretched of Muirwood falls into this category.

The Wretched of Muirwood focuses on the story of Lia, a young girl that lives in an abbey and works in the kitchen. She is a “wretched” – a child that was abandoned by her family and left on the abbey’s doorstep. There are several references as to what makes one a wretched early on, but suffice it to say that it centers around abandoned children with unknown parentage.

Through the first several chapters of the book we learn the following:

• The Aldermasten (the leader of the abbey) refuses to teach Lia to read.
• Lia possesses the power to draw on the “Medium” which is a sort of magical force.
• One of the main conduits of the Medium are carved faces which are referred to (by some) as Leering Stones.
• An injured man is brought to the kitchens in the dead of night. Lia and her friend Sowe help keep his existence hidden and nurse him back to health.

I’m skipping over a lot here, but I’m not going to just put the whole story down for you. Eventually Lia leaves Muirwood Abbey in an attempt to help the young man (Colvin) and they take off to get him safely to the scene of a battle. (I know, I know, skipping a lot…but go read the book if you want full details.)

Let’s get into the things I really enjoyed about this book.

There’s a strong female lead character. Too often, especially when the story features a younger female character, they come out as a single note – no complexities, easily predictable, very stereotyped. Lia is not that. She is not driven by her desire for the male lead (it’s there, certainly, but it isn’t what drives her), she’s driven by her desire to learn how to read.

Along with that, we witness the inner conflict she faces while trying to work with the Medium. It’s a fascinating way of handling magic, and I’ll get into that more in a minute, but it takes a toll on her and we see so much more than just a “time to do some magic” approach.

The story takes place in a small window. I mean this both geographically and temporally. The entire book spans about a week of time, excluding the first chapter which is set four years prior to the main events. And even though Lia and Colvin take off on a journey? It’s not weeks or months long…it’s a couple days.

Part of the problem I have with fantasy novels is that the suffer from…well, I think the best way to put it is “scope creep”. They often have a solid story, some good characters, and plenty of direction, but the mess it all up by sending the characters over hundreds of miles and tossing a bunch of different plot elements into the mix to help make a “grander scale” for their work.

A TON of fantasy novels are guilty of this…hell, the entire reason I walked away from The Wheel of Time is because entire new civilizations and thereby new plotlines were getting tossed around at the beginning of BOOK NINE. C’mon, Robert. I just what to know what happened to Rand. (I have the internet. I now know, at least sort of.)

The magic system is a neat concept. The Medium, at least as Lia first understands it, seems to emanate from the Leering Stones. As we learn more we find out that those stones are merely conduits or focal items that help a person draw forth the Medium from themselves.

Control of the Medium is not an absolute thing for anyone that is able to use it. The Medium acts almost as if it is a living being – it has drives, it has desires, and it will refuse to come forth for one with doubts in their minds. This becomes an interesting stumbling block when Lia is no longer able to call on the Medium for help.

Finally, there are those that are innately gifted with using the Medium and those that force it out of themselves. While we don’t know all the details of how this happens, it’s made clear that the second method is corrupt and leads to an evil path.

I purchased this book (well, the whole trilogy really) because it was cheap and sounded like something interesting. Now I’m wishing I had read these earlier as I’m thoroughly enjoying them. I hope the next two books are as solid as the first.

Final Thoughts: A great read (especially for the author’s first work), with a neat take on a magic system. Very palatable, and doesn’t suffer from scope creep. Would recommend.