Maker bless you, warriors, rogues, and mages, and welcome to our review of “Dragon Age: Magekiller,” a book that is almost very interesting. The characters are almost compelling. The action is almost exciting. The one thing holding “Magekiller” back from being very good is that the protagonists don’t drive the story forward; the story happens to them. They cannot grow as characters if they don’t have agency, and readers cannot become emotionally invested in their choices if they don’t make any. There will be heavy spoilers for this book, and a not-so-spoiler-y thing or two from “Dragon Age: Inquisition” will be mentioned. So save the world, and talk to your best friend, here’s my take on “Dragon Age: Magekiller.”
Written by Greg RuckaCover by Sachin Teng
Illustrated by Carmen Carnero
Inked by Terry Pallot
Colored by Michael Atiyeh
Lettered by Michael Heisler“‘Dragon Age: Magekiller’ is a fun and engaging fantasy story for anyone who enjoys the genre.” — Comic Book Resources
Tessa and Marius are mercenary partners who eliminate those that use magic to hurt others. When they betray a powerful patron intending to kill them, they’re forced to flee and join the Inquisition.
We meet our hero, Tessa, a snarky rebel, and her strong-silent-type BFF / partner in crime Marius, as they rescue a bachelor in distress from a blood mage. Tessa and Marius are the titular Magekillers. They believe that power corrupts, and that mages have too much innate power, and are therefore innately corrupted. So they’ve dedicated their careers to hunting villainous apostates at a reasonable price. Fans of the greater Dragon Age canon are primed to disapprove of this worldview, but Tessa and Marius seem like two interesting people who have carved out a specific life for themselves for as yet unknown specific reasons. They begin with agency, and then it’s all downhill from there.
They are followed back to their temporary residence by Flavius, the slave of a Tevinter magister, sent by his master to procure their professional services. They’re loathe to help any member of the magical ruling class of Tevinter, but Flavius convinces them by telling them that the mage they’re meant to kill is sacrificing children. When Tessa and Marius meet Flavius’ master, who turns out to be the Archon of Tevinter himself, they learn that Flavius was lying. They have in fact been hired to take out four high ranking members of the Venatori, dragon cultists who want to overthrow the Archon and return Tevinter to it’s former terrifying fascist dystopic glory. The Archon will kill them if they disagree, so they agree. From the moment Flavius entered their room to the moment they take their leave of the Archon, twelve pages have passed. That’s too many pages to spend watching the protagonists reluctantly agree to embark on a journey they want no part in. For all this time we spend with Flavius and the Archon, they never come back. Tessa has a fun, layered personality that reveals itself gradually over the course of the story, but Marius is defined by his brooding silent mystery. These twelve pages could have been a single panel launching Tessa and Marius into part one of their adventure, and then more time could be spent getting to know the characters who are more important to the story.
Tessa and Marius easily assassinate the first three Venatori, but they hit a wall when Marius is more inclined to smooch the fourth one. This fourth Venatori is part of Marius’ mysterious past. Knowing the Archon won’t forgive them for letting her live, Tessa and Marius are forced to flee. The only active choice was made by Marius, but readers are robbed of the opportunity to join Marius’ emotional journey to make this decision, because he is totally defined by his unwillingness to share his inner life with his best friend and professional partner Tessa. On the run, a hole in the sky opens up and starts spitting out demons, so Tessa and Marius dedicate their new careers to fighting the apocalypse. They later join the Inquisition, the organization dedicated to closing the hole in the sky. Fans of “Dragon Age: Inquisition” know the whole story behind that whole situation, but Tessa and Marius have no such information. They don’t ever have to look inside themselves and question the choices they’ve made; they are just flung from one fretful adventure to the next, and they do their best to survive it.
A real opportunity for introspection and character growth is missed when they join the Inquisition, and particularly when they meet Dorian, a beloved character from “Dragon Age: Inquisition” who is a mage expatriot from Tevinter. Having heard that Tessa and Marius were once self-described career magekillers, Dorian asks them pointedly if working with him will be a problem. This would be the moment for Tessa and Marius to struggle with their own worldview, but they have no problem working with Dorian. They have easily decided that the demons pouring from the sky are priority number one, and they don’t mind working with mages to solve that problem. It’s not an illogical conclusion, but it would be more interesting to watch them struggle with their own prejudice and grow as people in order to come to that conclusion.
Fans of “Dragon Age: Inquisition” will smile at cameos from Dorian, Leliana, Krem, and Donal Sutherland, but Tessa and Marius hop from adventure to adventure so quickly that readers will not have time to make emotional investments in any characters besides Tessa and Marius. Tessa’s girlfriend Charter comes the closest to being the exception; their meet-cute is genuinely funny and endearing. There are plenty of artfully rendered charming moments like this. There are also plenty of beautifully depicted and effectively exciting battle scenes, with swirling magical electricity, bright green Fade rifts against bright blue skies, and painful blows with a a real sense of weight to them. However, without a character arc to tie them together, they fail to amount to more than a series of emotionally flat events. Until next time, Maker bless you.
