An Unkindness of Magicians
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4.1 • 11 Ratings
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
“A remarkable writer.” —Neil Gaiman, bestselling author of American Gods
An Alex Award Winner
There is a dark secret that is hiding at the heart of New York City and diminishing the city’s magicians’ power in this fantasy thriller by acclaimed author Kat Howard.
In New York City, magic controls everything. But the power of magic is fading. No one knows what is happening, except for Sydney—a new, rare magician with incredible power that has been unmatched in decades, and she may be the only person who is able to stop the darkness that is weakening the magic. But Sydney doesn’t want to help the system, she wants to destroy it.
Sydney comes from the House of Shadows, which controls the magic with the help of sacrifices from magicians.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Howard's sophomore novel (after Roses and Rot) is zippy at the expense of character development. Sydney is a magician in an alternate modern-day New York who's hired to represent House Beauchamps in the Turning, a magical competition that determines the hierarchy of houses in the magical community called the Unseen World. Magic isn't an ability magicians have unlimited access to, but rather a resource that can be bottled and transferred from magician to magician. As a child, Sydney was a captive of the House of Shadows, who siphoned some of her magic to strengthen the abilities of other magicians, but she won her partial freedom after challenging the house. Now, with each magical duel she wins, her abilities grow and the reservoir of stolen magic shrinks. The houses in power plan to eliminate her if she survives the Turning. The plot is very rushed, and readers will find Sydney difficult to connect with; any obstacles or sources of tension are no match for her magic. The other characters treat events that should be devastating without prolonged concern, thus discouraging the reader from getting emotionally involved. When Howard slows down, both the characters and the Unseen World flourish in her gorgeous prose, but these moments are too few.
Customer Reviews
Pleasant and Diverting
This is a pleasant, diverting and well written book that will happily let you spend a few hours in a magical New York. The book is let down by the plot being predictable and it never feeling like the heroine is in any danger or even any trouble at all. The New York, in the book, is also very bland with no serious differences between any location; the characters also all feel either 2D or very similar. "The Rivers Of London" series by Ben Aaronovitch does the “hidden magical sub-culture in a big city” far, far, far better.
Nevertheless, it is a pleasant read and worth spending a few hours visiting The Unseen World in New York.