The Glass Magician - Charlie N. Holmberg

I recently read and reviewed the first book in The Paper Magician Trilogy, The Paper Magician and it was such a nice snack book for me that I immediately started reading the next book, The Glass Magician.

 

It starts a few months after the first book, so we miss Ceony getting a big part of her origami training which was so much fun to read in the first book. She's still as infatuated with Thane as she was in the first book, but not much has happened it seems. After these months of relative calm, things are about to become more exciting once more as attacks on Ceony's life follow in rapid succession.

 

This book, once again, was a very nice and easy read. Like I described earlier, it was like a snack. Those books are wonderful to read from time to time. It's only that when you start to think about them, they will all eventually fall short. This one is no exception.

 

For The Paper Magician I stated I would've loved to see more world building, as I didn't have a clue how the magic was supposed to fit in the rest of the mundane world. Problem is, I still don't know. While it's made clear that the Magician do just mix in with the rest, go to their tearooms and everything and don't mind to talk about magic in public at all. There's a special magician police (and possibly a whole Ministry) but I wonder, how does this all fit in. Will magical criminals be judged by a normal system, or a special system, Is this only for magic related crime or for everyone who's magical no matter what their crime is?

 

Glass Magicians are a great new addition to the magic, with mirror transportation! No matter how much I like the paper dog, mirror transportation sounds more tempting to me. The spells however are the same as for Paper Magicians and it seems that once enchanted these paper/glass objects can easily be shared among people who are not bound to a certain element.

 

I had a problem with the bad guy near the end of the story. Do you also find it so annoying when the villains has captured the heroine and then starts telling her his entire plan, and this of course turns out to be vital for the next events? (It feels like reading an episode of Totally Spies)

To be honest, I didn't like the whole unbinding thing. I mean, one of the important parts of the magic in these books was the fact that you could only bind to one thing and had to stick with it. Without that, how will anything stay the same, as it will be easy to switch between different tasks. However, I can imagine doing the whole unbinding/binding ceremony countless times might be a bit tedious.

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The romance was still unnecessary for me. Especially since near the end it turns out that

despite Thane seeming to be more wise than Ceony in this matter, he's actually counting the days to her graduation so they can life happily ever after... *sigh*

(show spoiler)

 

This all said, I did enjoy reading it and will read the last book, The Master Magician when it's published.

 

The Glass Magician is the second book in The Paper Magician Trilogy. The first book is The Paper Magician and the last book, The Master Magician is expected to be published this summer.

 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!