katekat's review against another edition
4.0
Slow to start but then once the book started moving it was quite interesting. Fen was a great main character I really liked her and she made me laugh. I also quite like Luke but I'm not so sure about Kaio. I am excited to see what new adventures are to come next for these characters because the plot did draw me in once the story finally got underway.
alexandrahughes's review against another edition
2.0
Rating this book is so hard for me. Part of me loved the book and part of me hated it.
I loved the details the author put into the story and the different lands. I felt it was all really well-developed. The supporting characters were fun and had great personalities.
My problem lies within the main character Fen. I found her really annoying and immature. She is 21 and acts 15. She tries too hard to come off as a tough girl. She has no respect for other peoples' cultures. She's rude. She has no filter. She will say any cuss word she can think of (which I don't mind, but it felt forced on her). She made me dislike the book. If she had been different, I would have given this book 4 stars. The only reason I gave 2 stars is because of the supporting characters and the thought and details put into the story.
I'm hoping in the next book she makes some sort of transformation and grows up.
I loved the details the author put into the story and the different lands. I felt it was all really well-developed. The supporting characters were fun and had great personalities.
My problem lies within the main character Fen. I found her really annoying and immature. She is 21 and acts 15. She tries too hard to come off as a tough girl. She has no respect for other peoples' cultures. She's rude. She has no filter. She will say any cuss word she can think of (which I don't mind, but it felt forced on her). She made me dislike the book. If she had been different, I would have given this book 4 stars. The only reason I gave 2 stars is because of the supporting characters and the thought and details put into the story.
I'm hoping in the next book she makes some sort of transformation and grows up.
elanna_g's review against another edition
4.0
This was surprisingly fascinating and really cool. I really liked the main character and how you get to explore this new world through her eyes. A lot of it was predictable, however it was still loads of fun and I really enjoyed it. I wish there was a second book though, I still have a lot of questions and I really want to know how this story continues.
apocalypticpeacock's review against another edition
4.0
First of all, I'd like to mention that I did love this book. I wasn't expecting much from the lack of hype however this is one of those situations where you have to just ignore the presumption that it'll be crap and enjoy the book for what it is: absolutely brilliant!
Fen spends her days working in a bookstore, living on her own after her mum died and contemplating the benefits and banes of going to college. Until one day she's attacked by a man who offers her a choice between him killing her and her killing herself with pills. Lucky for her, there's a (rather good-looking) mysterious boy named Luken who intercepts her death in return for a bullet wound. The next thing Fen knows, she's on a journey through a fantastical land of magic, running from a group called the Val Kyr.
The characters in this novel were great. Fen was likeable and entertaining and the Del Mars (family) were suitably charming. I wouldn't say there was a great deal of emotional connection to the characters however this is a very light-hearted book and I think maybe too much emotional attachment could have destroyed that essence of humour that runs throughout the novel. So, that being the case, the characters were exactly how they should be. They weren't anything special but they worked brilliantly. Elfie even became my favourite character and she wasn't even a person: she was the magical equivalent of AI!
On the world-building front Wynde really impresses. Everything was sparkling and magical, as it should be in a joyous fantasy story like this one. The world was very reminiscent of an elf's dwelling, as Fen graciously pointed out, and I found myself desperate to explore every nook and cranny of this new world.
Most of all:
THAT PLOT TWIST!!!
I should have seen that coming. But I didn't. And I legit had to put down the book for a few minutes whilst I got my bearings back again after.
Fen spends her days working in a bookstore, living on her own after her mum died and contemplating the benefits and banes of going to college. Until one day she's attacked by a man who offers her a choice between him killing her and her killing herself with pills. Lucky for her, there's a (rather good-looking) mysterious boy named Luken who intercepts her death in return for a bullet wound. The next thing Fen knows, she's on a journey through a fantastical land of magic, running from a group called the Val Kyr.
The characters in this novel were great. Fen was likeable and entertaining and the Del Mars (family) were suitably charming. I wouldn't say there was a great deal of emotional connection to the characters however this is a very light-hearted book and I think maybe too much emotional attachment could have destroyed that essence of humour that runs throughout the novel. So, that being the case, the characters were exactly how they should be. They weren't anything special but they worked brilliantly. Elfie even became my favourite character and she wasn't even a person: she was the magical equivalent of AI!
On the world-building front Wynde really impresses. Everything was sparkling and magical, as it should be in a joyous fantasy story like this one. The world was very reminiscent of an elf's dwelling, as Fen graciously pointed out, and I found myself desperate to explore every nook and cranny of this new world.
Most of all:
THAT PLOT TWIST!!!
I should have seen that coming. But I didn't. And I legit had to put down the book for a few minutes whilst I got my bearings back again after.
aimee70807's review
5.0
Another excellent book by Sarah Wynde! A Lonely Magic is quite different from her Tassamara series, but is just as good (with the potential to become even better as this new series progresses).
Like Wynde's previous novels, A Lonely Magic is carried by a strong heroine, in this case a 21-year-old who spent much of her late teens on the street but is now working toward pulling her life together. Enter two mysterious men, who remind me delightfully of the love interests in Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices series, then add in some not-quite-as-bad-as-you-think bad guys, and you have the recipe for a page-turner.
Next, expand your imagination with a unique fantasy world that's as intricate as it is enticing. There are functional tattoos, sunken cities, and sentient magic. This is where A Lonely Magic really soars, and why I think the series could become even better than Tassamara as the world-building continues to expand in later books.
A Lonely Magic is clearly part of a series, so it doesn't wrap up all that many threads in this first volume. On the other hand, book one doesn't end on a cliffhanger either, and while I would have loved to read the second book right away, I didn't get that pain my stomach that comes when a first book in the series leaves me in agony.
If you're looking for a thoughtful and gripping fantasy, A Lonely Magic is it! I got to read a pre-release copy, but it will show up on Amazon next week, I believe.
Like Wynde's previous novels, A Lonely Magic is carried by a strong heroine, in this case a 21-year-old who spent much of her late teens on the street but is now working toward pulling her life together. Enter two mysterious men, who remind me delightfully of the love interests in Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices series, then add in some not-quite-as-bad-as-you-think bad guys, and you have the recipe for a page-turner.
Next, expand your imagination with a unique fantasy world that's as intricate as it is enticing. There are functional tattoos, sunken cities, and sentient magic. This is where A Lonely Magic really soars, and why I think the series could become even better than Tassamara as the world-building continues to expand in later books.
A Lonely Magic is clearly part of a series, so it doesn't wrap up all that many threads in this first volume. On the other hand, book one doesn't end on a cliffhanger either, and while I would have loved to read the second book right away, I didn't get that pain my stomach that comes when a first book in the series leaves me in agony.
If you're looking for a thoughtful and gripping fantasy, A Lonely Magic is it! I got to read a pre-release copy, but it will show up on Amazon next week, I believe.
hannah_a_r_teatalksbooks's review
2.0
A Lonely Magic actually came out a few days ago, on July 10th, which is great, because that means that if you’re looking for a fast-paced YA novel with a hearty dose of magic and a plethora of attractive people, you can go out and get it right away! To sum up, Fen, a young bookseller, is accosted in an alley and told to choose her death - pills or pistol. A stranger comes out of the gloom and rescues her, but is shot himself in the act. She tries to call for help, but falls unconscious before she can. When she wakes up, she’s somewhere she’s never been before, and no one around her will give her any answers. Before long, she finds herself in and out of a very unofficial protective custody and discovering secrets about a world she had no idea existed - as well as secrets about her own past.
The briskness with which Wynde handles the setup is definitely commendable; she whisks Fen right through to the main action of the story while still managing to establish what I am fairly certain will be major plot points in the sequels. Fen has a fairly strong narrative voice, though occasionally her interior narration gets repetitive (she begins a surprisingly large number of sentences with ‘God, …’). There are also some really good character notes in there; when her rescuer’s older brother, Kaio, brings her clothes, her embarrassment is very realistic, and later I was particularly enchanted by her focus on her coat. She’s being hustled into a private jet and flown to who knows where, but what really strikes her as impossible about this situation is that this is happening and she doesn’t have a coat in a Chicago winter! Unfortunately, the writing in the first third of the book feels somewhat forced and is more than a little prone to triteness and cliché. And by that it was wince-worthy. Also, the section following her hasty removal from Chicago drags a lot; I think it’s supposed to mimic Fen’s own frustration and confusion, but it’s not a long section and it felt like it went on for ages.
The writing did pick up in the second third, and by the time we hit the politicking in the third section I was fairly well hooked. The world Wynde introduces is satisfyingly detailed on the surface, and while I can’t say for sure, it seems likely that many of those surface details will turn out to be part of some fairly complex worldbuilding in the sequels. I’d lay you odds that Theresa, Fen’s boss at the bookstore, is going to turn out to be significant. While the world of A Lonely Magic is not the most original by any means - it builds off Atlantis in a way I’ve definitely seen done before - it’s very pretty and atmospheric, and it looks like she’s got some definite ideas about where to go with the internal politics. Also, the idea of the skewed population ratio - and Fen’s gut reaction to realizing that she’s trapped in an underwater city in which the men outnumber the women four to one - is a pretty good one, and definitely adds a lot of momentum to the plot.
On the whole, though, it felt more like a first novel than it should’ve, given that Wynde has five novels and a number of short stories under her belt now. I think my biggest problem was consistency of dialogue; the speech patterns of the non-human characters, the Sia Mara, are all over the place, swinging from archaisms to colloquialisms. In part, this is explained by the translation magic. None of the Sia Mara are actually speaking English. However, at least three of the characters have had considerable exposure to contemporary media (ET, and apparently The Vampire Diaries) and their speech patterns should reflect that. Moreover, later on another of the Sia Mara uses extremely colloquial language. This is explained as a class difference; the speaker is a member of a lesser house, while the other characters are all closely connected to the rulers of the city and are therefore expected to speak formally. However, this doesn’t explain the archaic speech patterns, though it does explain the elevated vocabulary.
Which was another thing I had an issue with; the vocabulary wasn’t all that intense, and yet Fen, a bookseller by trade, insists that she doesn’t understand it. She’s a bookseller reading Romeo and Juliet and she struggles with “Suffice it to say that I believe my ability to prioritize our needs exceeds that of the local authorities.”? He could certainly have spoken more simply, but it’s not like he’s spewing technical jargon. And speaking of technical jargon, the entire thing with the data access pattern (a spell allowing Fen to access Sia Mara archives) was ridiculous, stylistically. It doesn’t seem in any way plausible for a culture that values aesthetics so highly as this one seems to to spew technobabble. Blank verse, sure. Haiku, why not? It’d be irritating and contrived, but more in keeping with the worldbuilding. Moreover, while its gradual descent into more accessible speech patterns is adequately explained later on, examples of it show up long before the explanation itself makes sense - as an example, when Fen asks it where she can find some clothes and it suggests she “try the sheet” before descending back into overly-computerized language.
My biggest problem with the book, though, was not the style, the numerous inconsistencies, or the bizarre hottitude of every single character in the book, but the utterly implausible failure of any of the characters to provide any sort of explanation at all. They’re not Sidhe, they have no excuse for failing to provide so much as a destination to Fen! While they do need to keep some secrets, it would’ve been a lot more plausible and a lot less manipulative and controlling if any of the characters had provided any sort of explanation at all, glossed and transformed or no, before they were absolutely forced to do so by circumstances. There’s really no reason they couldn’t have done, and that they didn’t really rubbed me the wrong way.
In the end, I did enjoy the book, but the first third of it was irritating and as a fifth novel it was pretty inexcusably unpolished. While I’m intrigued by the ending, I don’t think I’m intrigued enough to bother with the sequel. Also, the title makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,
tl;dr - fast-paced, atmospheric, with a clear character voice, but full of inconsistencies and stylistically frustrating. If you’re looking to fill a couple of hours, this book will do. Warning for manipulative behavior.
The briskness with which Wynde handles the setup is definitely commendable; she whisks Fen right through to the main action of the story while still managing to establish what I am fairly certain will be major plot points in the sequels. Fen has a fairly strong narrative voice, though occasionally her interior narration gets repetitive (she begins a surprisingly large number of sentences with ‘God, …’). There are also some really good character notes in there; when her rescuer’s older brother, Kaio, brings her clothes, her embarrassment is very realistic, and later I was particularly enchanted by her focus on her coat. She’s being hustled into a private jet and flown to who knows where, but what really strikes her as impossible about this situation is that this is happening and she doesn’t have a coat in a Chicago winter! Unfortunately, the writing in the first third of the book feels somewhat forced and is more than a little prone to triteness and cliché. And by that it was wince-worthy. Also, the section following her hasty removal from Chicago drags a lot; I think it’s supposed to mimic Fen’s own frustration and confusion, but it’s not a long section and it felt like it went on for ages.
The writing did pick up in the second third, and by the time we hit the politicking in the third section I was fairly well hooked. The world Wynde introduces is satisfyingly detailed on the surface, and while I can’t say for sure, it seems likely that many of those surface details will turn out to be part of some fairly complex worldbuilding in the sequels. I’d lay you odds that Theresa, Fen’s boss at the bookstore, is going to turn out to be significant. While the world of A Lonely Magic is not the most original by any means - it builds off Atlantis in a way I’ve definitely seen done before - it’s very pretty and atmospheric, and it looks like she’s got some definite ideas about where to go with the internal politics. Also, the idea of the skewed population ratio - and Fen’s gut reaction to realizing that she’s trapped in an underwater city in which the men outnumber the women four to one - is a pretty good one, and definitely adds a lot of momentum to the plot.
On the whole, though, it felt more like a first novel than it should’ve, given that Wynde has five novels and a number of short stories under her belt now. I think my biggest problem was consistency of dialogue; the speech patterns of the non-human characters, the Sia Mara, are all over the place, swinging from archaisms to colloquialisms. In part, this is explained by the translation magic. None of the Sia Mara are actually speaking English. However, at least three of the characters have had considerable exposure to contemporary media (ET, and apparently The Vampire Diaries) and their speech patterns should reflect that. Moreover, later on another of the Sia Mara uses extremely colloquial language. This is explained as a class difference; the speaker is a member of a lesser house, while the other characters are all closely connected to the rulers of the city and are therefore expected to speak formally. However, this doesn’t explain the archaic speech patterns, though it does explain the elevated vocabulary.
Which was another thing I had an issue with; the vocabulary wasn’t all that intense, and yet Fen, a bookseller by trade, insists that she doesn’t understand it. She’s a bookseller reading Romeo and Juliet and she struggles with “Suffice it to say that I believe my ability to prioritize our needs exceeds that of the local authorities.”? He could certainly have spoken more simply, but it’s not like he’s spewing technical jargon. And speaking of technical jargon, the entire thing with the data access pattern (a spell allowing Fen to access Sia Mara archives) was ridiculous, stylistically. It doesn’t seem in any way plausible for a culture that values aesthetics so highly as this one seems to to spew technobabble. Blank verse, sure. Haiku, why not? It’d be irritating and contrived, but more in keeping with the worldbuilding. Moreover, while its gradual descent into more accessible speech patterns is adequately explained later on, examples of it show up long before the explanation itself makes sense - as an example, when Fen asks it where she can find some clothes and it suggests she “try the sheet” before descending back into overly-computerized language.
My biggest problem with the book, though, was not the style, the numerous inconsistencies, or the bizarre hottitude of every single character in the book, but the utterly implausible failure of any of the characters to provide any sort of explanation at all. They’re not Sidhe, they have no excuse for failing to provide so much as a destination to Fen! While they do need to keep some secrets, it would’ve been a lot more plausible and a lot less manipulative and controlling if any of the characters had provided any sort of explanation at all, glossed and transformed or no, before they were absolutely forced to do so by circumstances. There’s really no reason they couldn’t have done, and that they didn’t really rubbed me the wrong way.
In the end, I did enjoy the book, but the first third of it was irritating and as a fifth novel it was pretty inexcusably unpolished. While I’m intrigued by the ending, I don’t think I’m intrigued enough to bother with the sequel. Also, the title makes absolutely no sense whatsoever,
tl;dr - fast-paced, atmospheric, with a clear character voice, but full of inconsistencies and stylistically frustrating. If you’re looking to fill a couple of hours, this book will do. Warning for manipulative behavior.
katekat's review
4.0
Slow to start but then once the book started moving it was quite interesting. Fen was a great main character I really liked her and she made me laugh. I also quite like Luke but I'm not so sure about Kaio. I am excited to see what new adventures are to come next for these characters because the plot did draw me in once the story finally got underway.
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