A review by wardenred
Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans

adventurous challenging fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I’m the best practitioner you’ve never heard of.

This book and I had a bit of a rocky start. Normally, I really appreciate beginnings like it has: the kind where instead of easing you into the setting, the author just starts off describing/explaining exactly as much as the POV character native to the setting would care to linger on and trusts the reader to make sense of things as they go along. I find this approach fun and immersive, and I don’t mind feeling a little lost for the first few pages. In this case, though, I felt lost a bit longer than was comfortable. I think it was because of the nature of the events the first chapter or two focuses on. It’s not very clear which parts are the baseline “normal” here, which events stand out but aren’t wholly unexpected for characters in these positions, and which parts are completely out of the ordinary—because the ordinary hasn’t been established yet. Without having that understanding, I couldn’t judge the stakes or fully grasp the significance of the characters’ choices.

Gradually, though, things got a lot more exciting, especially due to more moving around the very exciting city and more exposure to the magic system that is definitely the strongest point of the book. It’s a hard magic system, and it’s kind of layered in that sense: there is a specific rigid set of rules, there is the MC who intuitively breaks some of them, and then there are the actual rules behind the rules that he does in fact intuitively follow. I really enjoyed exploring the whole magical aspect of the world, both the acts of alchemy and the interactions with other dimensions with all their denizens and alchemical ingredients and wonders. I also really enjoyed the interactions between the magic and the society structure/class issues. There were a bunch of small side plot threads focused on it all that were really interesting to follow.

The characters were likable enough, but kind of lacked depth. They did have clear goals and mostly clear motivations, but I felt like a lot of the time their “screen time” was more built around what they can do/what skills they possess rather than who they are and what’s important to them. My favorite is definitely Zagiri; her arc is a bit stereotypical, but she’s got a really fun voice and personality and I really enjoyed hanging out with her. Siyon, the MC, initially hooked me with his thirst for knowledge that he couldn’t realize because of the social constraints, but as the story progressed, I couldn’t fully retain my interest in him as a fictional person as he felt more like a plot devise all too often.

In big part, that’s because the plot events escalated so quickly. On one hand, the events were really exciting and, vibes-vise, kind of reminded me of the Tarot Sequence books that I love very much. On the other hand, Rune from the Tarot Sequence starts off in a position where it’s completely understandable why he’d go toe to toe with the movers and shakers of his world. With Siyon, all those high-octane plot points with the Demon Queen and such didn’t feel like such a natural progression of events. Perhaps if the journey he undertakes here was spread over two-three books, the stakes escalated more gradually, etc, there would be less sense of disconnect. That would also provide more opportunities to explore the setting with that awesome magic system, because really, with the turns the plot takes here, it feels like we’ve jumped straight from the basics to the very top, missing out on all the cool bits in the middle.
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