Magyk

A fun book that doesn't take itself too seriously, and a promising start to a series: I'm looking forward to seeing whether the sequels build effectively on this beginning. In some ways, it's standard fare for fantasy aimed at young people. It annoyingly equates parents/origins with the answer to "Who am I?" and has a restoration-of-the-monarchy-equals-good thing going on. It has some interesting quirks, though. Here are two:

1) It's nonsexist ("wizard" isn't even a gendered term! and there's some background grumbling about the evil administration having barred women from acting as judges).

2) It doesn't kill off the central child characters' parents, or even make them neglectful and/or incompetent. Instead, without comment, it builds a show more world in which children simply have greater autonomy than in our world. On a number of occasions, an adult advises a course of action and a child simply rejects it, and that decision stands. It's a really neat way to go, and I'm interested to see whether and how that develops in future installments.

I do find it annoying that words associated with magic appear in bold text. What's with that? And the bit at the end that follows up on various minor characters' fates leaves readers on a weaker note than just stopping at the end of the main narrative. show less

I remember reading this at a young age many, many moons ago. It was refreshing and felt new- it wasn't too psychologically complex so it was easy to follow and understand. I remember this book being more centralized around the human characters and there weren't that many creatures in it. I only mention this because normally one thing I look to 'check off boxes on my list' is if it is creature heavy because that's important for me. The vocabulary level is at least middle school level. The plot is well paced and the characters are quite likeable. Even if it didn't check off all my boxes, I still really enjoyed it. I always thought it was a series that more people didn't know about- but I'm happy to see there's a large amount of people on show more this site that know of this book series! It's quite a charismatic read and also satisfies fantasy lovers who feel they need something a bit different (at least, that's how I felt when I started it) show less

To be honest, when I began this book I wasn't sure I'd like it. I am not at all a fan of spelling magic as "magyk" and I thought that sort of thing would drive me nuts. But then a wonderful thing happened: I fell into the world of this book and didn't come out until I'd finished it, hours later. The feeling of reading it reminded me of how I felt when I was a young adult (or even younger) and discovering fantasy books for the first time. I'm looking forward to curling up with a cup of hot chocolate and book two as soon as I can.

Septimus Heap Series, #1...

My 9 year old son and I listened to the audio version in the car. It was really good- a lot of fun! He got wrapped up in the story too which isn't an easy thing for boys. The narrators were fantastic though which makes a huge difference! I never listen to audio books with crappy narrators. I can tell in the first few minutes if they are going to be good or not. If they suck, they go right back to the library. : ) But anyways, this one was definitely a success. It had magic with fun spells, assassins on the hunt for a princess, cool characters- animals included and a lot of action to keep everyone entertained. We are looking forward to starting the next one in the series tomorrow.

"Crazy as a cuttlefish
Nasty show more as a RAT
Put her in a pie dish
Give her to the CAT!”
-Angie Sage, Magyk show less

I was surprised by this book. It started off seeming to be yet another fantasy adventure set in a fake medieval world, and I was all ready to think of it as derivative and formulaic. And then boy 412 leapt out of the book, pulled a sardine from under his red beanie hat and slapped my face with it repeatedly until I saw sense. . . Or rather nonsense. A rather delightful nonsense that was entertaining and very interesting.

This book is extremely funny. Some of that will only be clear to older readers - I got my 7 year old to read it and she has also enjoyed it immensely, but she missed some of the humour, so I guess the 9-11+ age group are ideal for this book, although I loved it as an adult too.

Some of the storyline is predictable even show more for children (my test group of one shows this), some is predictable for adults, but not necessarily for children (same test group!) But predictable or not, the story is just thoroughly entertaining, well written, and with a very beautiful ending that made me set down the book and blink away a tear before anyone dared accuse me of getting emotional over a story.

I thoroughly recommend this book, but I would venture to say the natural audience would be anyone who loved Harry Potter. The mixture of magic, humour and wry observations on life will surely appeal to the same readership. show less

A nice start to this children's fantasy series. Magyk works intelligibly; it also is finite and not to be used frivolously (a characteristic that magic sadly lacks in the Harry Potter books). Sage includes enough absurdities to entertain both adults and children (a red door painted black, for example, or Marcia's preoccupation with stylish boots) without sliding over into farce. The language is often clever (Silas is an Ordinary Wizard, while Marcia is an ExtraOrdinary Wizard). The action moves swiftly and progresses logically with only a few deus ex machina moments and incongruities (for example, on p. 386 Jenna suddenly realizes that she has been in the tunnels before, in her dreams, but we did not know about these dreams prior to the show more revelation).

While Stroud's Bartimaeus trilogy is the best I've read recently in this genre, the Septimus Heap books may hold that role for younger readers. Older readers will figure out much of the plot fairly early on, but this does not detract from the pleasure of the story. Mark Zug has provided engaging illustrations at the head of each chapter, and the cover art is explained not too far from the end of the book. show less

Despite the series being named after Septimus Heap, this exciting, well written, and wonderful book follows many characters: the spunky 10 year old princess Jenna, her various adopted brothers, boy 412 of the Young army and many of the adult Wizards, Witches and ghosts who inhabit this world that is part fantasy medieval and part fascist dictatorship. I loved it and find it a perfect follow up to Harry Potter.