The Paper Magician by Charlie N Holmberg

This is a book of anachronisms and I was slightly disappointed in it truth be told.  I love a good fantasy tale and was really looking forward to this one - sadly I really couldn't settle in to the story or become particularly interested in any of the characters.  Our heroine, Ceony, is an annoying brat on the whole who gave me the impression that she expected to get exactly what she wanted to the detriment of all others.  I also found her feelings towards her Master, Emery Thane, to be rather uncomfortable and misplaced.

The Magical Systems devised for the novel do work well and this is the only reason I gave this book 3 Stars.  I really liked the premise that a Magician could only have power over manmade objects and that they had to specialise in a particular material.  Of course, there is the "dark side" to be considered where manipulation of humans is the only way but you have to have a foil for the good don't you?  In the case of this particular book I really don't think you do - I can see how this was used as a device to tell us more than we ever needed to know about Mg. Thane (yes the constant abbreviation to Mg. throughout the book did annoy me) but I would have been more interested in the larger world being created.

There is much that doesn't marry up in this book, not least the sense of time and place.  From the snippets of information given I am guessing this is supposedly Victorian London, or a version thereof but much of the dialogue is very Americanised - my pet peeve is the use of Mom, it would have been Mother or Ma.  The geography doesn't stack up or the time it would take to travel between Solihull and London by carriage.  For some reason the paper dog also irritated me - probably because the enchantment meant that he was very robust and seemed to scamper about quite well in exceedingly damp conditions.

I have books 2 and 3 in the series already and I am slightly regretting their hasty purchase.  I will get around to reading them eventually but it is very definitely an eventually!