2025/073: Sorcery and Small Magics — Maiga Doocy

“How can I stop doing something that I don’t even know I’m doing in the first place? It’s not like I’m sabotaging myself on purpose. The feelings are just there.” [p. 281]

M/M romantic fantasy. Leovander Loveage is brilliant at small magics, his cantrips and charms executed with musical accompaniment. Sadly, Leo's larger spells -- his Grandmagic -- never work out right. He's a student at the Fount, an institution where scrivers (like Leo) write the spells, and are paired with casters who execute them. Unfortunately, in their final year, Leo is not paired with his best friend Agnes but instead with his nemesis Sebastian Grimm, a past victim of Leo's practical jokes, who has little time and less patience for Leo's frivolity.

 When they accidentally perform a forbidden spell (Leo expects it to change the colour of his eyes: it does not) they have to work together to fix the problem. Which entails a trek into the Unquiet Wood, where sorceries and brigands and monsters abound and the Wilderlands, where magic flourishes unchecked, loom close; an encounter with an excellent sorceress named Sybilla; and Leo and Grimm's gradual realisation of the exact nature of that forbidden spell...

Sorcery and Small Magics is told entirely from Leo's point of view, and it takes a while to unravel the trauma behind his determination not to perform Grandmagic, and the true emotions underlying his happy-go-lucky demeanour. He's not altogether likeable: he mistrusts his friends, but is happy to follow advice from shady characters encountered in taverns; he always makes the worst possible choice; he has little respect for the lived experience of others. Yes, there is loss and pain in his past, but he's had years to become a better person. There are definite signs of improvement by the end of the novel, though, and of a more serious and honest Leo.

This is the first in the Wilderlands trilogy, and I'm intrigued enough by the worldbuilding, and by some of the characters, to want to read the next volume.

2025/072: A Language of Dragons — S F Williamson

‘The ones who have hoards don’t need to work, but the ones who don’t, well …’
Hoards. Like piles of gold or money. Why do dragons need money? They don’t shop for groceries or pay bills. It hits me that, in all my years learning dragon tongues, I’ve never questioned how dragons fit into our human society. [p. 180]

London, 1923, where there's a Peace Agreement between the British government and the Dragon Queen; where some dragons fought in the Great War alongside humans, but others massacred the entire human population of Bulgaria; where Vivien Featherswallow, seventeen years old and the daughter of respectable Second Class parents, will stop at nothing to ensure that she can continue her studies in dragon linguistics, and prevent her little sister from ever being demoted to Third Class.

The novel opens with Viv trying to impress the Chancellor of the Academy for Draconic Linguistics -- but it turns out her parents aren't so respectable after all, and by midnight they're in prison, Viv's in custody, and a coup d'etat is in progress.

Then the Prime Minister offers Viv a job at Bletchley Park, at the Department for the Defence Against Dragons (which seems to employ only teenagers with shadowy pasts). Viv's job is in the Codebreaking team, but it's actually more dragon linguistics. One of her colleagues is a former friend who Viv betrayed: another is a would-be priest. Romance! Melodrama! A teenager with a history of bad decisions in a position to affect the lives of thousands! What could possibly go wrong?

I'd have enjoyed this more if Viv had been a more relatable character, though I do applaud the author's portrayal of a flawed, impulsive young woman who's only gradually acquiring the ability to reflect on her actions and take responsibility for their consequences. The intricacies of draconic linguistics and biology were fascinating, and I loved Viv's sheer enthusiasm for learning and discovery. The secondary characters could have done with more characterisation: I found it hard to differentiate or care about most of Viv's colleagues. And the romance was not wholly convincing (and, be warned, does not have a happy outcome). 

I believe it's first in a series -- the end of the novel opens up a whole new set of possibilities -- and I'd like to see where the story goes.