Magic Below Stairs

Cute tie-in to the Sorcery and Cecilia trilogy. I liked it fine, and it was interesting to see Thomas and Kate through the eyes of their servants. This felt more like a middle grade book, which threw me off a little at first, since S &C are YA. It didn’t add a ton to the main series, but it was fun to see some familiar faces again. I loved it that Thomas went into labor when Kate did because of her wedding ring being his magic focus. Brilliant!

Quick read middle grade story about an orphan in the "Sorcery & Cecelia" world.

The age of the protagonist makes it a children's book and there's nothing except a fairly scary curse to make it unsuitable for fairly young readers.

On the other hand, it kept my interest as much as if it were a short story for adults, by having stuff that an adult would enjoy but a kid would pass right over.

This book has a younger target audience than the prev (light romance) books in the sequence, but it's fun to see the wicked marquess and his Kate from a different point of view.

The softening, for modern children's sensibilities, of horrors of workhouse and deadening effect of total emotional neglect, was niggling at me as I read (had recently read biography of real workhouse boy of same era, and it was considerably less happy story as in real life the world was not populated mainly by people of good will.)

The hero is a brutal pragmatist and the tone reminded me a lot of Diana Wynne Jones - which is a very good thing in a ya fantasy.

Fun, cute. It's set shortly after The Grand Tour, in Thomas and Kate's household just before their first child is born. I like Frederick, and it's great to get a look at Thomas and Kate from an outsider's perspective. Billy Bly is neat - I like that he's (reasonably) helpful and willing, but really not very strong. What nearly destroys him can be easily dealt with by human magic, once he's pointed out its existence... And the final bit was pretty obvious to me from way back. It fits Frederick so well. Oh, and there's an off-hand comment made about magic being kept from leaking into your spells by using foreign languages, which ties this universe to Mairelon's - not definitively, but an interesting hint. Now, are there going to be any show more more of the 'childrens' stories? Because I enjoyed this better than any of the three 'mainline' stories... show less

This was a nice light read. I was pleased to find an orphan hero who doesn't have a Tremendous Destiny and isn't the True Heir to anything. Frederick has the old fairy tale virtues of hard work and kindness, and is duly rewarded. (I also did a bit of happy hopping to see the Belly Blind featured in a novel.) The characterisation is light, as one might expect from a middle-grade novel of 200 pages, but Frederick does have some convincing conflict, misery, and jealousy to get through, and some good friends to find.

The setting is after Sorcery and Cecelia, after the marriages and before the children.

A solid, pleasant sidework to the Sorcery and Cecilia series. This was a much simpler book, with no enigmas to untangle; the central plot was easy to predict, but none the worse for it. In some ways, it's a nice change of pace, as the main series is sometimes a bit over-tangled.

A fun children's fantasy spin-off from Stevermer's Sorcery and Cecelia collaboration with Wrede.

Frederick Lincoln is plucked from an orphanage to be a servant boy in Lord Scofield's London house. He makes friends for the first time and encounters brownies, wizardry, and a deadly curse. But Frederick is plucky and resourceful, and has hidden talents.