BooksOfTheMoon

I had been irritated by Ceony, protagonist and apprentice paper magician, a bit in The Glass Magician, but I found her so bad here that I nearly put the book down several times. I wasn’t convinced by the big reveal of the last book, that a magician can unbind themselves from their chosen material and rebind to something else, and the fact that Ceony uses it here almost as a superpower is just a bit dull. But beyond that, her paranoia and obsession with getting involved with things when others are perfectly competent to deal with them is almost upsetting. Saraj Prendi is the big bad here, upgraded from henchman in the previous book (and yes, I do find it slightly dubious that the only non-white character in the series is the bad guy) and she gets obsessed with finding him, worrying about her family and her mentor, Emery Thane. At one point, Saraj even points out to Ceony that not everything is about her, something which she should really have taken to heart much earlier.

The relationship between Ceony and Emery is now much more open (something which is still a bit dodgy) and to ensure that there’s no accusations of favouritism when she comes to do her magician’s test, he hands her off to someone that he had bullied as a child, ‘cos that’s going to go down well with everyone, isn’t it? Not that Magician Bailey gets much to do other than to glower and be Not As Good As Emery. The attempts by the author to manipulate us into disliking him are pretty obvious.

I’ve tried to ignore it, but the setting here has had me twitching since the start of the series. I’ve tried to palm it off as just an alternate world where Things Are Different, but there’s too much where Holmberg brings in real-world things that just break my suspension of disbelief. This very much didn’t feel like early Edwardian Britain, but more modern day America in terms of attitudes and actions. The stuff with Ceony’s sister sort of came out of nowhere, but it really felt much more like she was a 1990s rebellious teenager (complete with cigarette), not someone from the turn of the 20th century.

It’s a shame as, despite the flaws, I’d enjoyed the first couple of books in the series (although I thought the first was definitely better than the second) but this really didn’t work for me. After her stupidity throughout the book, I almost resented Ceony’s happy ending, which is not the way you want to leave a series.

I mostly enjoyed this second story set in a world where magicians can bond to a single type of man-made material and are forever bound to work only with that. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m turning into a grumpy old man, but I found Ceony’s pining over her mentor, Emery Thane, a bit wearing. It felt like another case where a good heart to heart conversation would have settled things.

And then there was a bit towards the end of the book where Ceony takes it upon herself to confront the Big Bad almost just out of pique at being left out of the discussions that are going on amongst the full magicians (she’s still an apprentice, after all). She gets into trouble and I had very little sympathy for her.

Ceony’s friend Delilah is charming. Apprenticed to a glass magician, she’s our view into some of the interesting things that can be done with glass and mirror magic. Abilities include communicating and transporting through mirrors, and using glass as CCTV. While not as imaginative as some of the things that could be done with paper in the first book, it was nicely thought out.

Not quite as good as the first one, but still a lot of fun.