The Paper Magician

Book Title: The Paper Magician

Author: Charlie N. Holmberg

Series: The Paper Magician Triology #1

Date Started: August 4th 2018

Date Completed: August 5th 2018

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Historical, Adventure

Quality Rating: Three Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

This book was exactly what I wanted when I read it. It was during the BookTubeAThon, I'd been really getting into 18th century-style magical Londons, and I wanted somehting just enjoyable and quick. The Paper Magician was all of those things.

It's a really interesting idea, and the discipline of paper magic was really nicely done. It was well explained and imaginative; I hadn't quite seen anything like it before - and that's a real feat. Unfortunately, past this area the rest was a bit lacking. I think it'll probably come up more in the sequels, but for now it felt like only the paper magic had been paid much attention to. I still don't understand how it fits into the world's magic politics, or even really how the whole magic education works. In The Paper Magician we follow our protagonist on an apprenticeship, but we don't know much about where this fits in the grand scheme of things. This could've been particuarly useful considering the whole context and tone of the world was kind of unclear: clearly 18th century inspired, but there were modern things like plastic and definitely more modern relaionships, but mentions of things that could also be steampunk? The world outside of the little cottage we find ourselves in is still a mystery, but it wasn't one the author was interested in solving for us.

Part of me feels like this was like a prequel to the actual story (I mean, the main conflict is a tool to reveal a massive amount of exposition for the protagonist - well done in the circumstances, but also a bit unsatisfying). There were so many questions posed and none of them answered, because they weren't really relevant to this exact story. This was the Act One where our heroine is thrown into a new situation and has to catch up with the other characters who have several years groundwork on the story. I can't quite decide if that was handled well or poorly; on the one hand having that exposition communicated with its own plot line makes it far more engaging and easier to process. But on the other, why is our protagonist's story so saturated by stories that aren't her own? Yes, I know I'm reading too much into it - at the end of the day, it was enjoyable to read. But my brain can't help feeling a bit confused at the author's choices.

The one thing that I think might be a decider for some people is the romance, and I have to say I was a bit uncomfortable with the teacher/student 11-year-gap relationship. But aside that it's very instalove, the vagueness of the world again confused the tone of this. Is it totally fine? Because that kind of thing isn't generally thought of as fine. Yet teachers/professors/whatever-they-were-supposed-to-be basically got told it directly to these faces and didn't comment or even really react. It's not of massive consequence to the story (yet) but it stopped me from being able to properly engage. That being said, the way in which the author shows falling in love was so interesting, and again merged it very well with the main quest storyline.

The Paper Magician feels like a very short introduction to the series, and even though I had my issues with it I did enjoy reading it and will probably go on to read the next books. It's imaginative and fun, but it didn't feel like a fully-formed book.