Tina's Reading Books

Emily Edwards is a witch who lives in a small western mining town in an 1800s America that is somewhat different from our own. Magic, witches and warlocks are very much a part of society. Sure, they are somewhat persecuted and regarded with suspicion, but they exist openly and their magic works.

The action starts with Emily practicing a bit of selfish magic and making a series of unfortunate decisions that a) cause major emotional distress on a good friend, b) causes Emily to get run out of town and c) ends up with her having a magical stone embedded in her hand. Too late she remembers the old rule of magic her adoptive father drummed into her head three time what though givest returns to thee.

She finds herself accompanied by one Dreadnought Stanton. A know-it-all Warlock who is self important, condescending,smug and annoying. He has a brusque air that both offends and slightly intimidates Emily. But he convinces her that she needs his help in getting the stone out of her hand. To that end, they plan to travel to one of the major seats of magic where Dreadnought had his training to see his mentor to understand the significance of the stone.

Unfortunately, that stone attracts all kinds of people out to get it -- with or without Emily still attached. Emily and Dreadnought find themselves on a cross country run encountering all kinds of characters both friendly and foul on a mission to get that stone.

Normally I dislike on-the-run books. I find them a bit tedious, frankly. But I actually enjoyed this one mostly because of the sniping between Emily and Dreadnought. He is such a piece of work! Soooo self-important. But Emily manages to kick him in the shin (figuratively speaking) every so often. It makes for a nice bit of character interplay.

The author has a deft hand with both characters. Emily is somewhat naive and sheltered but at heart she's an intelligent person so she doesn't do randomly stupid things. And Dreadnought could have been all kinds of a jerk. But I think the author reigns that in and gives him some restraint so that you like him even as you are sighing with exasperation at him.

Another enjoyable thing about this on-the-run story are the walk-on characters that Emily and Dreadnought meet as they make their cross country trek. Some of the characters are after that stone and are more ruthless and evil about it than others. Some people are just random characters who either help, hinder or act as collateral damage in some way. They all are memorable.

Outside of the character and the plot is the world building. I enjoyed reading about the three major areas of magic that make up the magical system in the book. Of the three, I found the idea of credomancy -- faith magic -- the most fascinating. It is the idea that the stronger the general public's belief of magic is, the stronger the credomancer (the practitioner of that type of magic). Hence if people did not believe in magic at all then the credomancer would not be able to practice magic. This is not necessarily a new concept in that I read variations of the idea of the belief in something keeps it relevant. However it is interesting that the author has extrapolated that idea into the actual practice of magic.

She also gives magic a physical presence right in the core of the earth and makes it resemble other natural systems that follow a cycle like weather for instance. Magic, if used, has to be discarded and returned back to earth in a form that can be recycled. Like all natural systems it gets bunged up when humans interrupt the cycle. The over-arcing plot of the story is about the cycle getting messed up.

Which brings me to why this isn't a five-star book. While I found the ideas and world-building great, I found some parts of the denouement a bit muddy and we get an energizer bunny villain <---- I hate those.<br/>
One thing I will mention for romance fans who might read this because of the romantic element, Emily and Dreadnought do fall in love in the end and you can tell that they will be together in the next book. But this isn't a romance novel. Emily & Dreadnought aren't written or built to spec according to the romance novel playbook. While Emily is more like a typical rom novel heroine (although she has an unabashed prejudiced against Native Americans that comes from a place of basic ignorance --- something that simply would never do for a romance heroine), Dreadnought is not written at all like a rom hero.

Overall great first book for a series. Looking forward to the next one.