Excerptible reviewed The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg (The Paper Magician #1)
Review of 'The Paper Magician' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This was a good read, I picked it from the list of Kindle Unlimited books and I'm not disappointed!
It's set in an alternate Victorian age, where there are magicians who can work magic with any manmade material - metal, glass, plastic... and paper, hence the title. Magicians bond with their chosen element and once bonded, they can't change their mind.
Ceony has always wanted to become a Smelter, a metal magician, but at the last minute she is informed that due to the dearth of magicians going into Folding she must bond with paper, which she sees as weak and useless. She is incredibly disappointed but her choice is paper or nothing, and so she becomes the apprentice to Emery Thane, the preeminent Folder in England.
Initially she believes that folding is good for nothing but entertaining children, but Magician Thane soon shows her there is much more …
This was a good read, I picked it from the list of Kindle Unlimited books and I'm not disappointed!
It's set in an alternate Victorian age, where there are magicians who can work magic with any manmade material - metal, glass, plastic... and paper, hence the title. Magicians bond with their chosen element and once bonded, they can't change their mind.
Ceony has always wanted to become a Smelter, a metal magician, but at the last minute she is informed that due to the dearth of magicians going into Folding she must bond with paper, which she sees as weak and useless. She is incredibly disappointed but her choice is paper or nothing, and so she becomes the apprentice to Emery Thane, the preeminent Folder in England.
Initially she believes that folding is good for nothing but entertaining children, but Magician Thane soon shows her there is much more to being a paper magician, and her skills are quickly put to the test when she encounters an Excisioner - a magician who uses human flesh and blood.
It's a bit of a mixed bag - the prose is a little juvenile but it's engaging, lots of description of what Ceony is seeing and experiencing, everything is so new to her and by extension the reader. It's a bit like a souped up Harry Potter - she's learning magic, but there's a horror element provided by the gore associated with practicing Excision.
It's not a particularly long book, and it's part of a series, so most of my questions are not answered. We don't know the full history of some of the main characters, and I expect that to unfold in the next book, which is ready and waiting on my Kindle!
