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A review by linguisticfanatic
The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg
Did not finish book. Stopped at 67%.
At first I was totally fine with the story. The world and magic interested me even if the MC annoyed me. I was totally fuming when on the first night of the MC being in her teacher's house she thinks about confronting him the next day about what he was working on in his office because "I don't like secrets."? You barely know each other's names! You're in his house! It's his own office! So what if he's working until the early hours of the morning?
All of that aside, I was interested to see the world that was in this book and where things were going. It was obvious to me that there was something going on with the adults in the world and I was willing to be invested in their actions while putting up with a 19 year old moping about her lot in life.
I was going along fine until Lira decided to steal Emery's heart. I was fine rolling with the stolen heart thing. When the adult magicians showed up I was hoping they'd do something to keep Emery going while we got to see what the different professions can do when working together. What type of police force do they have? How about intelligence? It was mentioned early on that paper folding was used for spying, so would we get to see these other 11 paper magicians help in some way? How about medical stuff? What could they do with a person missing a heart, but there are still metal and plastic magicians to pull from.
All of that would've been great to read through. Instead, we have our MC decide that she with her tiny folded birds and fish are going to traipsing off to find Lira and steal Emery's heart back. Even though I was rolling my eyes, I was at the 30%ish mark so I figured that it would just be an adventure in stupidity. I was thinking she'd get trounced and drag herself back home in disgrace, but instead I've been making my way through the 4 valves of his heart watching memories I don't care about. I'm currently in the 3rd valve at the 67% mark and dreading that there's still another valve to go through full of memories to watch and I just can't do it anymore.
I don't care to spend my time with a character I don't like watching memories one after the other. Ceony knows that she can't interact with the memories (outside of select moments) and yet she still goes up to each memory talking and trying to touch things. I can't deal with the stupidity anymore.
There was so much I could see good about where this story could've gone. There was just a very poor choice of storytelling mechanic used for too much of the book for me to stay interested.
All of that aside, I was interested to see the world that was in this book and where things were going. It was obvious to me that there was something going on with the adults in the world and I was willing to be invested in their actions while putting up with a 19 year old moping about her lot in life.
All of that would've been great to read through. Instead, we have our MC decide that she with her tiny folded birds and fish are going to traipsing off to find Lira and steal Emery's heart back. Even though I was rolling my eyes, I was at the 30%ish mark so I figured that it would just be an adventure in stupidity. I was thinking she'd get trounced and drag herself back home in disgrace, but instead I've been making my way through the 4 valves of his heart watching memories I don't care about. I'm currently in the 3rd valve at the 67% mark and dreading that there's still another valve to go through full of memories to watch and I just can't do it anymore.
I don't care to spend my time with a character I don't like watching memories one after the other. Ceony knows that she can't interact with the memories (outside of select moments) and yet she still goes up to each memory talking and trying to touch things. I can't deal with the stupidity anymore.
There was so much I could see good about where this story could've gone. There was just a very poor choice of storytelling mechanic used for too much of the book for me to stay interested.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror and Blood
Minor: Bullying