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matchamac 's review for:
The Paper Magician
by Charlie N. Holmberg
Overall entertaining, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
I would say this is an average YA novel with an above-average premise. I was completely enraptured in the beginning - cool world building, intriguing characters, and lovely imagery. However, this book seriously starts to drag from the midpoint onwards. The antagonist's defeat was creative, but otherwise the lines/characters/love story at the closure was quite cheesy. I would be interested in reading other works by this author as I think she shows a lot of promise, but this book was just okay for me.
My more specific notes for all you fellow nerds:
I would say this is an average YA novel with an above-average premise. I was completely enraptured in the beginning - cool world building, intriguing characters, and lovely imagery. However, this book seriously starts to drag from the midpoint onwards. The antagonist's defeat was creative, but otherwise the lines/characters/love story at the closure was quite cheesy. I would be interested in reading other works by this author as I think she shows a lot of promise, but this book was just okay for me.
My more specific notes for all you fellow nerds:
- Really easy to picture the house that is our setting for most of the book and the characters within (FMC, MMC, and everyone's favorite skeleton butler). Once again, really nice imagery.
- Although this author has studied under Brandon Sanderson, I definitely feel this book pays homage to Diana Wynne Jones
(I mean come on, the creepy reanimating magic with just a touch of body horror is totally her jam. Not to mention the stolen heart/changed eyes thing lol) . - I feel like our MMC deserved more personality. He started off solid but - even though we were delving into his own backstory - lost strength along the way. Justice for Thane! Also, a few of his 'trauma twists' were unnecessary to the story and contributed to the dragging in the latter half.
- At its best the romance in this book was endearing, but mostly it felt very much like a one-sided crush. We see (very very clearly) how she feels, but get little to no indication of any romantic inclinations on his part, which is pretty frustrating and help adds to his very placid meh characterness that takes over partway into the story. Had promise, needed more time to develop.