Thursday, October 5, 2017

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard


An Unkindness of Magicians is Kat Howard's second novel, after last year's Roses and Rot.  I loved Roses and Rot (an Urban Fantasy Fae tale involving two sisters striving to reconnect with each other at a school for art) and was really excited for this novel as a result when it was announced.  That said, aside from both books falling within the large category of Urban Fantasy, the two books are very different.  That said, this book is still excellent, with a great world of magic and excellent characters who inhabit that world.

This is a book of magicians (think Wizards, despite them not using the name) engaging in magical (and political, yes) contests for the fate of the magical world.  It's also the story that involves lawyers working to keep the magical world in order, voluntary and involuntary sacrifices of human life and pain, a woman seeking to solve a magical murder, and a man of color trying to make a name for himself in the magical world while keeping his own good conscience.  And yet all of these very different things and people come together nicely to form a pretty excellent and recommended book.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
Magic is real in modern day Manhattan.  The "Unseen World" is a world of magicians and people of various levels of magical power - some capable of merely lighting a candle through sheer will, while others are capable of massive illusions and transformations.  And this magical power can quite often be deadly.  Some magicians come from established families or "Houses," whereas some individuals come seemingly from nowhere.  It falls to one such House to rule the magical world and that magical leadership is chosen by the results of an oft-lethal magical competition known as a Turning, which comes about every 10-20 years.

The latest Turning has begun and magicians with great ambition have begun to make their move to set themselves up for the next generation of magical power.  Into this turning steps the mysterious Sydney, a magician of massive power who has seemingly come from nowhere.  Sydney is from the House of Shadows, the dark secret behind the magical power used by most of the Unseen World.  And while the House of Shadows seeks to use her to further its own agenda, she has her own plan: to break the House and tear down the underpinnings of the entire Unseen World.

When the dust settles after this Turning, nothing will ever be the same.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The only similarity really between this book and Roses and Rot is Howard yet again does an amazing job writing great characters and character relationships.  Sydney's friendship with Madison (one of the aforementioned lawyers) is amazing and I really wanted to just read more of their conversations honestly as much as anything.  We don't get much time with them, but the main love interest Ian's relationship with his sister Lara is similarly excellent and cute.  These are characters who I couldn't help but fall in love with and believable great relationships really help with that.

The world itself is described extremely well and is so great I kind of wish Howard would write some more stories in this universe (though she responded to me on twitter she doesn't intend to, so that's our loss).  The book throws us straight into this world right away and from an early point of the book we pretty much can figure out how things work without having it spelled out for us (although the book does later have some of the central concepts explained by Sydney to another character).  The book makes the world of magic seem well.....magical, and that's a great feat in and of itself.

In addition, the book mostly sticks the landing, which is not something a lot of books manage to do.  This is not a simple book, with a bunch of characters juggling plots all at once, but Howard manages to pull things together in a neat ending (albeit a bittersweet one).  The book doesn't have an explosive climax - as part of the story, our main character is more powerful than basically any other character and thus there's never a doubt until the very end that she's going to prevail in any part of the magical conflict - yet it works quite well.

I'd also point out that the book averts certain tropes happening to our main characters despite seeming at times like it's going to indulge in those (without spoiling anything), and it's really satisfying to be surprised in this direction.

That isn't to say the book is perfect of course.  The book cuts between different characters throughout (though Sydney is the main focus), and one such character is Grace Valentine, whose snippets early on are mysterious and ominous.  Her nature turns out to be something completely different, and it didn't made those early snippets before her reveal to stand out as misplaced, as if they were from a different draft where her role was different.  The ending as I mentioned, without spoiling anything, is supposed to be kind of bittersweet and I'm not sure that tone to the final ending really is set up well, even if the rest of the ending works well.

Overall though, this book is excellent and easily one of my favorite non-sequel books I've read that has been published this year.  Strongly recommended.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)