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Title: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
Author: Emily Croy Barker
Genre: World-walking fantasy
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: When grad student Nora manages to get herself enchanted into an engagement to the prince of the fairies, escaping is only the beginning of her problems.
Thoughts: I rather hope this is the beginning of a series. Not necessarily because I so desperately need to read more, but mostly because otherwise the number of dangling threads is egregious and offends my sense of craft.
That said, up until the end, I was rather enjoying myself. This is scarcely new ground--someone from our world stumbles through a portal and discovers they have fabulous powers and terrible problems in a new and more exciting magical world. Add a dash of Jane Eyre "falling in love with your broody and deeply problematic employer", and we've got a nice mishmash of formulas that worked well elsewhere. It's the details that make or break a book like this. And magician Arundiel is appropriately interesting yet threatening, Nora has enough problems here and there to make her indecision over where she belongs compelling, and the world-building generally works. If nothing else, Nora has strange new powers in this world that make her special, but she isn't automatically the most powerful person ever or the foretold messiah or any other Mary-Sue-ish ridiculous thing. She has a rare ability to work with magic, but it takes quite a lot of effort to learn, and by the end of the book, she's a promising beginner who might amount to something someday if she applies herself. I kind of appreciated her failure to teach the world Very Special Lessons.
But I'm still kind of irritated at the ending. We have two antagonists and a major supporting character unaccounted for, and the fundamental questions of the book are still not resolved. She makes a choice, but does not actually take an action on that choice. It's a cop out.
Author: Emily Croy Barker
Genre: World-walking fantasy
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: When grad student Nora manages to get herself enchanted into an engagement to the prince of the fairies, escaping is only the beginning of her problems.
Thoughts: I rather hope this is the beginning of a series. Not necessarily because I so desperately need to read more, but mostly because otherwise the number of dangling threads is egregious and offends my sense of craft.
That said, up until the end, I was rather enjoying myself. This is scarcely new ground--someone from our world stumbles through a portal and discovers they have fabulous powers and terrible problems in a new and more exciting magical world. Add a dash of Jane Eyre "falling in love with your broody and deeply problematic employer", and we've got a nice mishmash of formulas that worked well elsewhere. It's the details that make or break a book like this. And magician Arundiel is appropriately interesting yet threatening, Nora has enough problems here and there to make her indecision over where she belongs compelling, and the world-building generally works. If nothing else, Nora has strange new powers in this world that make her special, but she isn't automatically the most powerful person ever or the foretold messiah or any other Mary-Sue-ish ridiculous thing. She has a rare ability to work with magic, but it takes quite a lot of effort to learn, and by the end of the book, she's a promising beginner who might amount to something someday if she applies herself. I kind of appreciated her failure to teach the world Very Special Lessons.
But I'm still kind of irritated at the ending. We have two antagonists and a major supporting character unaccounted for, and the fundamental questions of the book are still not resolved. She makes a choice, but does not actually take an action on that choice. It's a cop out.
