James Nicoll Reviews

C. L. Clark’s 2025 Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf is a League of Legends: Arcane novel. I will unravel all that later.

Ambessa Medarda is perhaps the Noxian empire’s foremost military leader. A vision granted after she was badly wounded suggests she will one day lead the empire. Currently she does not even lead her own clan. Her beloved grandfather Hostlord Menelik leads.

Who will follow old Menelik? That is a question for another day. Menelik will surely live for many years to come.

Or perhaps, he will die immediately after his audience with Ambessa.

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C. L. Clark’s 2023 The Faithless is the second volume in the on-going Magic of the Lost secondary-world fantasy trilogy¹.

In the first volume: the city of Qazāl and the regions around Qazāl have been liberated from the imperialist Balladairans. Also, Princess Luca hopes to succeed to the throne of Balladaire, replacing her unpleasant uncle.

Surely every significant problem has been solved, leaving characters to focus on ill-advised love affairs. Then stuff happens.

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2021’s The Unbroken is the first volume in C. L. Clark’s Magic of the Lost series.

Touraine might have grown up an uncivilized believer in gods and magic had the Balladairans not taken her from her native Qazāl to educate her in Balladairian ways. She then sent to serve as a Sand, a conscript¹ soldier. No other choices offered.

Balladair has enough faith in their training that they do not hesitate to send Touraine and her fellow Sands to El-Wast, in subjugated Qazāl. Back to her home country, to put down a rebellion. 

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