Cute regency/victorian (?) era with an interesting magic system based on man-made materials.
Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.
Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.
The thought of paper magic was super unique and fascinating. The story of Ceony being forced into it and learning to appreciate it, as well as the (mis-)adventure’s she’s roped into due to her teacher’s past and secrets, was fun too.
What I didn’t particularly like was the romance. I’m not a fan of teacher-student/mentor-mentee romance in general, and it didn’t feel particularly well developed either, given that for the biggest chunk they are not even spending time together, really. Ceony just finds out a lot about him through other means. Things that he never would have told or shown her otherwise. Idk, that just didn’t feel like a good setup for a romance for me, along with the fact that he is her teacher and has a lot of power over her.
Check out the book here.
~iam
MI Book Reviews 