The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg…Not Really Feeling It…

*All reviews I write are spoiler free*

I’ve never known it take me so long to read a book that’s only 200 pages long.

I did pick this one up on purpose – I’ve had a very busy week of redecorating my room and keeping up with my Final Major Project at college, so I wanted something short, so I was guaranteed to finish it.

So let’s talk about The Paper Magician!

Title: The Paper Magician

Author: Charlie N. Holmberg

Publisher: 47North

Series Status: The 1st book in the Paper Magician trilogy

Number of Pages:  214

(Found on Goodreads)

Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic… forever.

Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined — animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

An Excisioner — a practitioner of dark, flesh magic — invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

Meh.

That’s my overall thoughts on this book. Just “meh”.

After seeing other people’s reviews, the same thing seems to be said on them all. This book had a lot of potential. And I agree with that so. very. much.

The idea was so interesting. The world has such an intriguing method behind it. People learned how to do magic. If you had enough money to go to a magic school and have an apprenticeship, you could become a magician. And then you’d choose which material to specialize in.

Right off the bat this caught my attention. I mean, it gave the impression that everyone was capable of magic, as long as you learnt how to use it. But I have so many unanswered questions about the world. I know it’s a short book, but I’m sure more could have been explained about the world and its’ ways.

The same sort of thing happened with the characters. I didn’t find myself particularly attached to any of them. I was just reading about them. I didn’t feel like part of the story. I know I didn’t really care what happened to them. Which says a lot, really. I can’t properly enjoy a book if I’m not bothered about how it ends. 

It took me so long to read this book considering it’s size. With it being only 200 pages, I should have read it in a day or two. But it took me over a week! Now, on some of those days I didn’t read at all because I was busy, but it still shouldn’t have taken that long. The book just felt so dense. So much was being explained in the short amount of pages, so sometimes it felt like you had to pull yourself through. The words didn’t just roll – I had to actually get myself to read, just to finish it.

It wasn’t all bad. I did really like the idea, and the unique way magic worked caught my attention every time I read. There was a lot of action involved, even if some of the events were a bit predictable.

I don’t think I was in the right mood to read this book. I’ve been in a sort-of reading slump for a while. I’ll read, but have to encourage myself to do so instead of just wanting to. Or I’ll not be able to find a book I want to read. So the lower rating could be to do with that, to be fair. There might be a time when I reread this book and give it a higher rating, but for now, this book didn’t impress me all that much.

Rated 2.5/5 stars

Order from Amazon!

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Have you read this book? What did you think?

If you haven’t read it, is it on your TBR?

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Until next time…

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