Take a photo of a barcode or cover
prolixity 's review for:
The Paper Magician
by Charlie N. Holmberg
Maybe it's the springtime air befuddling my brain, or maybe I'm just feeling very generous, but I thought this book was lovely.
Taking place in an alternate London where magic is not only possible but widely accepted, Ceony Twill has just graduated from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined at the top of her class. Since people can only enchant materials that are man-made (paper, rubber, plastic, glass, metal), Ceony will be bound forever to one element and subsequently sent to apprentice under a higher magician of that element. She hopes to become a Smelter, or a a metal magician, able to charm bullets and daggers and jewellery and the like. However, she gets called into the headmistress's office only to be told that she will have to become a Folder- a paper magician- due to the lack of skilled Folders.
Reasonably, Ceony is angry and bummed out. I mean, what in God's name is the use of being solely able to use magic with paper? It's incredibly lame. Not to mention, what could one even do with the skill of Folding, besides making some badass origami?
SPOILER ALERT: Some pretty cool stuff!
So Ceony is sent to become an apprentice to Emery Thane, a talented Folder who lives on the outskirts of London. Thane is delightfully mysterious and eccentric and almost immediately likable, whereas Ceony takes a bit of getting used to. She comes off, at first, as a bit of prude and a stuck-up, but eventually proves her worth. Because if there's one thing you can say about Ceony Twill, it's that she's practial. She's smart, capable, and maintains some of the grit she acquired through growing up in poverty. She doesn't pout over her lost dreams of enchanted bullets, but fully devotes herself to mastering the complex and whimsical art of paper magic (which, it should be said, is much less lame than it first sounds).
But when Thane's past catches up to him in a frenzy and Ceony comes face-to-face with Excision, the forbidden practise of blood magic, she'll have to go further than she ever thought she'd have to in order to save her mentor and the magical community as a whole- and the only help she'll get is from the paper she's been studying.
I've seen a lot of "DNF" reviews on here, and I can honestly understand why someone would put this book down. The first third of the book is, to put it bluntly, quite boring. It's just about Ceony studying paper and cooking and Thane mysteriously leaving for days at a time. And when the plot does finally pick up, it does so incredibly abruptly. However, like I said before, I really liked the story for reasons I can't put my finger on. It redeemed itself in the last half.
Sweet dreams of paper swans and fortuity boxes!
Taking place in an alternate London where magic is not only possible but widely accepted, Ceony Twill has just graduated from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined at the top of her class. Since people can only enchant materials that are man-made (paper, rubber, plastic, glass, metal), Ceony will be bound forever to one element and subsequently sent to apprentice under a higher magician of that element. She hopes to become a Smelter, or a a metal magician, able to charm bullets and daggers and jewellery and the like. However, she gets called into the headmistress's office only to be told that she will have to become a Folder- a paper magician- due to the lack of skilled Folders.
Reasonably, Ceony is angry and bummed out. I mean, what in God's name is the use of being solely able to use magic with paper? It's incredibly lame. Not to mention, what could one even do with the skill of Folding, besides making some badass origami?
SPOILER ALERT: Some pretty cool stuff!
So Ceony is sent to become an apprentice to Emery Thane, a talented Folder who lives on the outskirts of London. Thane is delightfully mysterious and eccentric and almost immediately likable, whereas Ceony takes a bit of getting used to. She comes off, at first, as a bit of prude and a stuck-up, but eventually proves her worth. Because if there's one thing you can say about Ceony Twill, it's that she's practial. She's smart, capable, and maintains some of the grit she acquired through growing up in poverty. She doesn't pout over her lost dreams of enchanted bullets, but fully devotes herself to mastering the complex and whimsical art of paper magic (which, it should be said, is much less lame than it first sounds).
But when Thane's past catches up to him in a frenzy and Ceony comes face-to-face with Excision, the forbidden practise of blood magic, she'll have to go further than she ever thought she'd have to in order to save her mentor and the magical community as a whole- and the only help she'll get is from the paper she's been studying.
I've seen a lot of "DNF" reviews on here, and I can honestly understand why someone would put this book down. The first third of the book is, to put it bluntly, quite boring. It's just about Ceony studying paper and cooking and Thane mysteriously leaving for days at a time. And when the plot does finally pick up, it does so incredibly abruptly. However, like I said before, I really liked the story for reasons I can't put my finger on. It redeemed itself in the last half.
Sweet dreams of paper swans and fortuity boxes!