The Paper Magician

A bold plot structure and startlingly original magic lifts this, sometimes graphically violent, YA Edwardian adventure into something special

SPOILER ALERT
I don't normally reveal plot elements but I can't review this book without sharing some of the early events.

"The Paper Magician" takes place in an alternative Edwardian England in which Magicians, people bonded to a particular man-made material, are able to work magic with it, producing bullets that don't miss or animating paper birds so they can fly, are part of the establishment.

At the start, the story seemed to be a pleasant but conventional tale of the first days of a talented young woman's apprenticeship to a Magician bonded with paper.

I settled down to see how Ceony, our show more hard-working and talented young apprentice would prove herself to her endearingly eccentric Magician. The tone was light. Ceony was an earnest young woman with a troubled past, a strong spirit and an innocently optimistic view of the world. The magic Ceony was taught to achieve by folding paper was original and imaginative. The Magician was kind-hearted, a little distracted, remarkably unsexist for a man of his generation and clearly had secrets. So far so good.

Then, suddenly the story changed both in tone and in structure and took me to somewhere quite unexpected. Ceony's magician is attacked at home, in front of Ceony and has his heart ripped out and taken away by an evil magician.

The violence of this was quite unexpected and very effective. From that point on the level of violence increases as Ceony struggles to retrieve her magician's heart.

In a further surprise, Ceony's struggle turns out to be a very unconventional one, involving very high concept magic that is well thought through and woven into a clever plot structure that combines the physical rescue of the magician's heart, a review of key moments from his life and from Ceony's and dramatic, very physical conflicts between Ceony and the evil magician who stole the heart.

There's a lot going on in this book. The magic is new so there's a lot to explain. The plot structure is a bold concept but the story could have dragged as the mechanics of the plot were followed. Charlie Holmberg keeps it all moving and kept me engaged by focusing on Ceony's experience. Ceony is brave, talented, determined and has a few scars of her own that shape how she responds to the threats that she meets.

This was a pleasing adventure that has a lot more to it than action but never got bogged down either in the mechanics of the plot or in existential angst. It was more violent than I expected and the magic was startlingly original but it remained an adventure in which the good can triumph if only they try hard enough.

"The Paper Magician" is the first book in a series. I'm interested in reading the rest of the series but I know I have to be in a particular frame of mind to get the most out of this kind of read so I will save it up for the next time that I need an escape into a simpler world where we all know who the bad guys are and we can cheer for the bravery of the good guys. show less

PUM-pom-poom. PUM-pom-poom. PUM-pom-poom. That's the sound of a heart beating. It's the sound of Emery Thane's heart beating. Thirty-year-old Emery Thane is a Magician, he's bonded to paper, and his ex-wife (who's an Excisioner bonded to flesh and body parts) has just stolen his heart. No, that's not figurative, it's literal. Em's ex, Lira the Excisioner, reached into his chest and took his heart out.

And Emery Thane's new apprentice, nineteen-year-old Ceony Twill (who's already starting to crush on her teacher), must save Emery by traveling through his heart, accompanied by her paper dog, Fennel. (Very convenient fellow Fennel is. He walks, he trots, and he even barks. But if it starts raining, Ceony can fold him up and put him in her show more bag so he doesn't get wet. Best of all, he doesn't cause any problem for Emery's allergies.)

PUM-pom-poom. PUM-pom-poom. PUM-pom-poom. Like that sound? See if you like it after nearly an entire book of Ceony's Harlequin-romance trip through her teacher's heart.

And if you're ever in Philadelphia, stop into the Franklin Institute and walk through its Giant Heart. I promise you, you'll find it a lot more interesting than Charlie Holmberg's The Paper Magician.

PUM-pom-poom. PUM-pom-poom. PUM-pom-poom. 1½*. Since I did at least manage to finish this stinker, I'll give it that much. show less

THE PAPER MAGICIAN had been sitting on my TBR mountain for months until I decided to give it a try this week. I am very glad I did. I found a feisty and engaging narrator in Ceony Twill and a handsome and enigmatic mentor in Magician Emery Thane. I also found a fast-paced story filled with epic adventure.

Ceony is very disappointed when she learns that she is going to be apprenticed to a paper magician. She had her heart set on being a smelter and working with metals. But, since there are only currently 12 paper magicians, there is a need to apprentice more students to this kind of magic. Ceony is pretty sure that there are so few because paper magic is so useless.

Then she meets Magicia Emery Thane who is only about ten years older than show more she is. He is an enigmatic sort but treats her with kindness. In fact, when he learns that she is missing the dog who was her companion at magic school, he makes her a dog of paper that she names Fennel. The dog becomes her companion on her adventures. And, oh, what adventures...

When Thane's ex-wife who has turned to dark, forbidden magic steals his heart, Ceony quickly makes him one of paper. But that just buys a little time. She has to pursue the evil magician - the Excisioner - and get Thane's heart back. The Excisioner manages to trap Ceony in Thane's heart. She has to find her way out in order to save him. As she travels through his heart, she learns all sorts of things about him. She finds herself falling in love with him while she is on this journey.

I can't wait to read THE GLASS MAGICIAN to find out what happens next. show less

As Ceony Twill graduates from magic school, she hopes she will be apprenticed to a metalsmith. She's wanted to do magic with metal her whole life. Instead, she works under the very odd Emery Thane, a paper magician. What can you even do with paper? But she makes the best of her situation and starts to enjoy Magician Thane's company. Until one day a wild woman breaks into their house and steals Magician Thane's heart right out of his chest. She is Magician Thane's ex-wife, a practitioner of Excision (the dark magic of human flesh), and Ceony has no choice but to follow her and rescue her mentor's heart.

The first 90 pages of this book are decent, but after that it devolves into a total mess. Nineteen-year-old Ceony falling in love with show more her thirty-one-year-old employer, mentor, and housemate is gross, especially when she also cooks and cleans for him, and has known him for less than a month. Ceony is trapped inside Thane's heart for a fully 95 pages of this 214 page book. It feels like an eternity. She brings along with her a (admittedly extremely cute) paper dog, who serves no purpose except for Ceony to repeatedly put him in her bag so he doesn't get wet, and then immediately take him out again. Just leave him in the bag!! She travels through about a dozen of Thane's memories, but she does not seem to actually learn anything and never fully figures out that she cant interact with the memories. Harry Potter and Ebeneezer Scrooge aren't the brightest bulbs in the chandelier but neither of them took more than 2 minutes to figure out they can't interact with memories/visions. Ceony makes quite a lot of assumptions that make no sense, like when she sees a book inscribed to "The Thanes", instead of thinking that Thane might have been previously married, she assumes he has an illegitimate child and someone is letting him know that they know about it by inscribing this book. What a stretch! It's the first one, for the record.

Even outside of Ceony's confounding behavior, the writing is not great. The villain has no motivation or depth, she is flat and uncompelling. If a system of magic is based on human flesh, couldn't it sometimes be used to heal people? That would be much more interesting than one-dimensional evil. The real breaking point for me came with this paragraph, 3/4 through the book:
"What about the time I was supposed to pick up my baby sister from school because my mom was having surgery on her foot?" she asked. "It was the middle of January, but I didn't go because I had a diorama I was supposed to present in English the next day and I wanted to get it done. It took me three hours, Emery! Three hours my sister stood in the cold, waiting for me. She got pneumonia and almost died because my homework was more important than her!"
It is established several times that this book takes place in 1901, and that Ceony's family was poor. Things that did not exist in 1901: poor people picking their children up from school. Non-emergency foot surgery. Foot surgery that only takes one day for recovery. Dioramas (in this usage of the word). Homework. I verified all of that in about 20 minutes of Googling. Did the author do any research at all?

Sorry for the rant. It's an extremely disappointing end to a promising beginning, and I won't be reading more unless I get very good reassurance that it gets better. show less

Stunning premise, with a creative and full-of-possibilities magical system (each magician, after schooling, bonds with a particular human-made material like glass, metal, paper, etc. and then does an apprenticeship; paper involves snazzy origami-like stuff plus the ability to 'animate' the creations, and lots of talk of paper thickness and texture and so on which I totally dig). I like that it's set in an alternative 1902 London; I feel like I don't see enough of the Edwardian era in fantasy or other historical fiction, and it's full of potential. I was enchanted by the opening chapters. Plus, Fennel the dog is great. So much hope!!!

However, I ended up feeling really stuck in the book, waffling about whether I wanted it to be longer show more (largely to minimize the presence of what I thought was going to be a chapter or two--a sort of magical realist literal/figurative journey through a character's heart--but which ended up occupying almost the entire book) or, like, a short story instead of a novel. The two main characters interact almost not at all after the beginning (mostly because one of them is half-dead). Things get sort of dark and then drag on for the last big chunk of the novel. I missed the sparkle of the beginning, which felt like it was promising a different sort of book than the one it actually introduced.

Because the setting--the paper magician's fascinating house and that intriguing Edwardian-era-plus-magic--sort of goes away when we enter the heart, the setting is never really developed. And insofar as it is explored, the substantial anachronisms of fashion, language, etc. aren't adequately tied into the alternative/magical bit to make them feel purposeful or logical.

I feel like I want to read, like, fan fiction set in this world, rather than this actual novel's actual sequel. show less

The summary amazon gives you for the book makes it sounds extremely exciting; something that is fast-paced and dangerous. Instead, The Paper Magician falls more towards the whimsical side of fantasy. The reader is never truly worried about Ceony's safety, nor are we ever really concerned about Thane's survival. Though that may make it seem like a boring read, it actually wasn't. It was fun, it was fluffy, it was playful. I can only recommend this as a beach/vacation read for all it's delight because once you start to think on it, you realise how much it lacks.

The story takes place sometime in the 1900s, but you wouldn't have known it given the way the characters talk and the complete lack of world-building. It seems the author believes show more dressing her characters in period pieces would automatically convey the setting and it definitely does not. Furthermore, we know nothing about the outside world. We find out from Ceony that if she had not become a magician, she would have preferred attending culinary school. Does this mean that magic is something that exists for all in the world but in order to use it, you must tap into it with the help of magician's schools? Or is this like Harry Potter where some people are born with magic but need education to properly use it? Does the public en masse know that magic exists? If they do, how does this affect their day to day lives? As this is supposed to take place in the early 1900s, does this world have a more balanced male/female dynamic? These are all minor questions that arise when you're reading the story. While it is understandable that the author can't just go ahead and answer each of these at once in the novella while still telling the story she wants, I do think we should get the feeling that the author does at least know the answer to these herself.

A love story is the crux of the story, not the magic that serves as its foundation. We are supposed to see a stubborn, strong-willed girl and a wild, mad professor make their way past each other's defences, eventually falling into each other's arms in love. That is definitely the case when it comes to Ceony falling in love with her professor, but not necessarily the case so far with Emery Thane. The second book in the trilogy will likely remedy this and have the professor begin to soften up towards the idea of love again. It's fun and playful the way the two interact and if it weren't for one major issue, this relationship would be great to see unravel. The issue? Emery Thane is not only her professor, which can be a no-no but easily overlooked, but he is also the man who paid for her entire tuition to magic school. She readily puts herself in his debt because he helped her accomplish her dream of becoming a magician. Ceony starts cooking for him and trying to impress him, then rushes off trying to save him simply because she feels indebted to him. Once she finally discovers who he is as a person, she says she is in love with him, but is she really? She only knows his memories and his past, not who he currently is. She might really love him, but it's a love heavily influenced by obligation.
It's really quite sad that this is the story we get, because I feel like there is so much great potential here. Emery Thane is a great character and one I'd love to read more about. His adventures seem fantastic, as does his upbringing. Lira is amazing and someone I wish we could see more of, especially since she is the one character that truly undergoes a drastic metamorphosis. The world, if/when fully developed, seems like it would be so much fun and great, yet full of danger. But we don't see most of it here on the page. All we see is Ceony and she leaves much to be desired.

First published at byLuluwithLove show less

Maybe it's the springtime air befuddling my brain, or maybe I'm just feeling very generous, but I thought this book was lovely.

Taking place in an alternate London where magic is not only possible but widely accepted, Ceony Twill has just graduated from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined at the top of her class. Since people can only enchant materials that are man-made (paper, rubber, plastic, glass, metal), Ceony will be bound forever to one element and subsequently sent to apprentice under a higher magician of that element. She hopes to become a Smelter, or a a metal magician, able to charm bullets and daggers and jewellery and the like. However, she gets called into the headmistress's office only to be told that she show more will have to become a Folder- a paper magician- due to the lack of skilled Folders.

Reasonably, Ceony is angry and bummed out. I mean, what in God's name is the use of being solely able to use magic with paper? It's incredibly lame. Not to mention, what could one even do with the skill of Folding, besides making some badass origami?

SPOILER ALERT: Some pretty cool stuff!

So Ceony is sent to become an apprentice to Emery Thane, a talented Folder who lives on the outskirts of London. Thane is delightfully mysterious and eccentric and almost immediately likable, whereas Ceony takes a bit of getting used to. She comes off, at first, as a bit of prude and a stuck-up, but eventually proves her worth. Because if there's one thing you can say about Ceony Twill, it's that she's practial. She's smart, capable, and maintains some of the grit she acquired through growing up in poverty. She doesn't pout over her lost dreams of enchanted bullets, but fully devotes herself to mastering the complex and whimsical art of paper magic (which, it should be said, is much less lame than it first sounds).

But when Thane's past catches up to him in a frenzy and Ceony comes face-to-face with Excision, the forbidden practise of blood magic, she'll have to go further than she ever thought she'd have to in order to save her mentor and the magical community as a whole- and the only help she'll get is from the paper she's been studying.

I've seen a lot of "DNF" reviews on here, and I can honestly understand why someone would put this book down. The first third of the book is, to put it bluntly, quite boring. It's just about Ceony studying paper and cooking and Thane mysteriously leaving for days at a time. And when the plot does finally pick up, it does so incredibly abruptly. However, like I said before, I really liked the story for reasons I can't put my finger on. It redeemed itself in the last half.

Sweet dreams of paper swans and fortuity boxes! show less