The blurb best sums this book up:

Each year, the magicians of Imardin gather together to purge the city streets of vagrants and miscreants. Masters of the disciplines of magic, they know that no ordinary lowlife can oppose them. But their protective shield is not as imprenetrable as they think.

Sonea, angry, frustrated and outraged by the treatment of her family and friends, throws a stone at the shield, putting all her rage behind it. She is amazed when it sails unrestricted through the barrier and knocks a magician unconscious.

The Guild’s worst fear has been realised: there is an untrained magician loose in Imardin who must be found before her uncontrolled powers can destroy herself and the city.

This book started off on the wrong foot for me, with a contradiction in the first paragraph (is the wind howling because of what it sees or is it silent because of what it sees?). The next few chapters did little to improve my opinion. The characters were stereotyped and the description clumsy. There were info dumps about how the world worked. There were words changed simply to make the world feel different—for example, ale became bol and there were substituted words for tea, coffee and trouble. Some very lazy world-building right there.

Having familiarised the reader with everything, it picked up a little bit. However, overall it remained a very unsatisfying read. The characters didn’t seem to develop much (with the possible exception of Cery). There was no explanation as to why Sonea wanted to go home so badly. And home to where, given that had been effectively destroyed in the beginning? Even setting that aside, the reader may have sympathised more if they’d been allowed to see more of what her life was like there. Instead we end up with cardboard cutouts of parents.

All in all, I feel that there are better stories out there waiting to be published.