This review does not contain spoilers! Please keep them out of the comments as well.
Part of the Free (Kindle) series.
Title: MageMother: The Mage & the Magpie
Author: Austin J. Bailey
Stars: ★★
Whenever possible, I suggest not starting more than 1 sentence in a paragraph with the same word. Do I always follow my own suggestion? No, but I generally try because I know how annoyed it makes me when I’m reading.
Why am I talking about this? Because it was a repeated problem for Bailey. He often started with the same pronoun – multiple times in a single paragraph. Sometimes, Bailey even did so for 66-70% of sentences in a single paragraph. Counterpoint – a lot of short paragraphs.
Chapter titles make the chapters seem more boring than they are, and really, I had to wonder if they were an attempt to prep a synopsis. If so, not a great sell.
A random poem had me counting syllables. Positive: all lines same length. Negative: not understanding how stress/unstressed syllables work. Erratic rhyme schemes were also frustrating.
All of the “twists” are predictable. You can probably read the book blurb and know the ending, but while there were numerous aspects which caused it to be a rather unexciting read, it wasn’t dreadful, and nothing horrendous stopped me cold. The book’s boring, somewhat slow, and a picky editor’s heyday. Oh, and it’s mislabeled YA. 100% MG in tone.
In summary, like many of the other free books, I think the ratings given to it weigh heavily its free status. If you want a plethora of nice reviews, might I suggest making your self-published book free? It seems to work for most authors.
Buy Link:
Eli Celata 
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