An Inheritance of Magic
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4.5 • 142 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The super-rich control everything—including magic—in this thrilling and brilliant, contemporary fantasy from the author of the Alex Verus novels.
The wealthy seem to exist in a different, glittering world from the rest of us. Almost as if by . . . magic.
Stephen Oakwood is a young man on the edge of this hidden world. He has talent and potential, but turning that potential into magical power takes money, opportunity, and training. All Stephen has is a minimum wage job and a cat.
But when a chance encounter with a member of House Ashford gets him noticed by the wrong people, Stephen is thrown in the deep end. For centuries, the vast corporations and aristocratic Houses of the magical world have grown impossibly rich and influential by hoarding their knowledge. To survive, Stephen will have to take his talent and build it up into something greater—for only then can he beat them at their own game.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Magic is a matter of privilege and class in this brilliant urban fantasy novel. Stephen Oakwood isn’t very special. He’s just a 21-year-old Londoner with a charming cat, a missing dad, and a soul-crushing minimum-wage job. What sets the city’s wealthy elite apart is their access to a type of magic known as drucraft…something Stephen’s father taught him a little about before he disappeared. Author Benedict Jacka sets up a very clever magical system, where the rich can harness the power of drucraft artifacts by buying them ready-made at unthinkable prices—which makes Stephen’s journey to craft them himself feel even more enticing. We were held rapt as he honed his skills with dedication, trying hard to become the engine of his own destiny and not just a cog in the upper crust’s machine. If you like a contemporary fantasy setting and a relatable hero, dive into An Inheritance of Magic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A world of magic usually known only to the rich and powerful is put to the test in the page-turning urban fantasy that launches an intriguing new series from Jacka (the Alex Verus series). Twenty-year-old Stephen Oakwood ekes out a life in modern-day London by working low-wage jobs and renting a room in his aunt's house. The only thing that really matters to him is fulfilling the promise he made to his father just before the man disappeared two years ago: namely, to keep practicing his drucraft, or magic. Stephen's growing skill draws the wrong kind of attention, however. When people start trying to murder him—and very nearly kill his cat in a scene that will be tough to handle for animal lovers—Stephen realizes he's got much more to learn about the elite world of drucraft, its internal power struggles, and what his family has to do with all of it. Jacka provides immense detail about the ins and outs of drucraft, which will please fans of hard magic systems but occasionally slows down the story. Still, there's lots of promise to this eat-the-rich world. Readers will be eager to see where things go next.
Customer Reviews
Best Audiobook of 2023
Incredible book. The narrator of the audiobook makes it even better. Best Audiobook of 2023
Interesting but clearly first in a series
This book was interesting and the world-building was well-done, but it was clearly the first book in a series and is not in any way a standalone book. If you’re not already a Jacka fan (for me, this was my first book by him) I’m not sure it’s worth the time to read this before the second book in the series comes out.
Personally I struggled somewhat with how the protagonist Stephen seems to be subtly misogynistic; for me the most cringeworthy part was when a woman character was clearly alluding to things like potentially being sexually assaulted and Stephen thought frustratedly that she didn’t understand that unsafe situations were more dangerous for men. I would have found this troubling even if I hadn’t read this book immediately after reading a book about the long aftermath of two teenage boys raping a young teen girl, but that made it especially jarring.