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Aram Raythe has lived his life so far as the village misfit who can't seem to say anything right, bothers almost everyone he's around, and has a strange compulsion to learn how to tie as many knots as he possibly can. So Aram is definitely surprised when he opens up a rift, quite by accident. Unfortunately, doing so also brings Aram's existence to the attention of the military.When a bard, Ebra, attempts to save Aram - though from what is not really explained - and his best friend, Markus, along with him, things quickly begin to go sideways. A sorcerer shows up to the village while Markus is in town trying to get supplies for the three of them to escape, and the sorcerer and accompanying soldiers lay waste to the village - all to find Aram. For what Aram and Markus don't realize is that Aram is a source of essence, which is what the sorcerers of the world use to create magic. Unfortunately, the military and sorcerers within it are not nice about how they collect that essence.When Markus and Aram are captured by the sorcerer and his men, their lives are catapulted onto a path - that is both terrible and great - that neither one could have even imagined.There have been many books described as epic, when it is really the series that is epic. This book, on the other hand, is truly epic. Clocking in at 99 chapters, not including the prologue and epilogue, and at just under 1,000 pages in length, this is a book that could have easily been a trilogy all unto itself. Yet, it is actually the first book in a series.Yet, while the length would scare many readers off, I can tell you that it is a truly great story that is worth every page. As with other epic novels and series, there is a large cast of characters for readers to get to know, but Spencer does a wonderful job of developing those characters and not introducing random characters that are just there to take up space. Sorry Random Guard #3, you don't get a role here. That is a testament to Spencer's planning and writing ability because I have certainly read epic novels with characters that may have had larger, important roles until the editing process got ahold of them and scrapped a lot of their importance. While that may have also happened in Dragon Mage, Spencer did a great job of removing superfluous characters. That's not the say there aren't a lot of supporting characters in the background; there are. There's an entire army of them. They just don't get names or speaking roles with descriptions that will add to the list of characters for a reader to try and keep track of.The one thing that I absolutely loved about this book - aside from the dragons since that goes without saying - is the magic system. Not only is the system built on a relatively unique foundation with the use of strings and weaving (I can think of only one other series with similar magic, and in that case, it is only a single character that uses magic in a way that is similar, as opposed to the method underpinning all of magic), but I appreciated the limitations that Aram has in using his magic. I would get into spoilers a bit too easily if I talked about the specifics too much, and I don't want to do that, but I will say that the good and bad of the magic system as used by the sorcerers in Aram and Markus' world is both awesome and awful.Along with the magical system is the worldbuilding, which was incredible. For Spencer didn't just build one world, but two, and created their entire histories which we were given information on a bit at a time. At the same time, rather than info dumps to provide definitive information, I really liked how the information provided was colored based upon who was providing it, and because of the history, there was a lot of misinformation, which also plays into the story. That's not something that I have seen much in other books I have read. at least not outside of the standard political intrigues and games being played; and while that was certainly at play here, too, it wasn't the only reason, and I definitely liked it.And I can now see this review getting long, so I'll finish by also mentioning that the audiobook, which was narrated by Ben Farrow, was a great experience. Again, the length (27 hours and 18 minutes) could be off-putting to some listeners, but it is worth it. Farrow does a great job with the narration, and I found that listening to him actually kept my mind off just how long the book is. His performance pulled me into the story and time was passing before I even realized it - to the point that I finished listening to the entire book in just over 2 days. I am definitely looking forward to continuing this series, and will hopefully get the opportunity to listen to the next book as well.