This short book, 200 or so pages, came to my attention this morning via Amazon Prime giving me the opportunity to choose one free kindle book to read. Generally I have not been too impressed with the choices I have been able to pick each month, there have only been two others that I have felt worthwhile to download let alone finish. And the amount that I despise reading on a screen of any kind (for some reason I have a miraculously short attention span reading on a screen vs. reading on paper) it is amazing I even finished those; which says a lot about those books in my mind. I downloaded and finished this book today. And I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed the book.
As a rule I tend to avoid books that are short because half of the time there is just not enough time for the author to really develop the character, or if they attempt to it comes off as being obviously rushed. And to top it off, the plot generally just does not seem all that thought out. I was honestly surprised to know that this was her debut book. I thought that her take on what magic could be was rather refreshing. Especially so for me because paper magic, which is the main magic the reader learns about, is essentially being able to do origami and make it live and I do origami in my free time; so I might be biased.
I thought that the main character was one that I enjoyed reading from the point of view from, she did not want to be a paper magician, however there was a logical way of her changing her mind that did not seem rushed at all. The main character is inquisitive and a hard worker, she rushed through school in a year and despite being put somewhere she did not want to be she knew that she couldn't let all the hard work go to waste. It also helped that her teacher Thane did a wonderful job showing her the different aspects of the magic. A woman who practices blood magic comes and takes his heart after a month of him apprenticing Ceony, and she is determined to save him. At first the driving force is that 1) he is someone she has started to grow fond of, and 2) because she knows that there is so much more for him to teach her.
The author made a very good decision on making the quest through Thane's heart the method of getting the reader to learn more about the back story of Thane, Lira his ex-wife and blood mage heart stealer, and a little bit more about Ceony. You are able to see the good, the bad, the hopes and dreams, and the doubts of Thane, while slowly watching as Ceony realizes her feelings towards him becoming much stronger.
I also wanted to put out there that for some reason I really loved Thane, the fact that he has very emotionally expressive eyes but is able to sort of hide emotions on his face for some reason really endeared him to me. And maybe it is just because I am good at imagining characters in books, or whatever it is, I felt that her descriptions of the main characters were really good. They weren't drawn out into long paragraphs at a time, they were a few sentences that were thrown throughout to sort of really drive home the most characteristic parts of each person. Thane with his eyes, Lira with the hard face, the pursed lips of magician Aviosky (for me I pictured a much younger version of Professor McGonagall).
For me this book was definitely a page turner, and one that I will definitely buy in paperback when it comes out September 1st of this year. I was also happy to notice on the Amazon page for this book that it looks as if this is going to be a series. I REALLY REALLY *insert many more reallys here* hope that there are quite a few more books following and that they are longer than this one. And for me, that is the only bad part of this book, for the space there was the plot and the characters was excellent and I would love to see what Holmberg could do in the space of a longer book. So I strongly urge those of you who do not have much time for reading these days, but want something worth the little time you have to spare to check this book out whenever you have a chance in September.
In order to make your lives easier, here is the link to the page on Amazon.
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