“Charlie is a vibrant writer with an excellent voice and great world building. I thoroughly enjoyed the Paper Magician.” —Brandon Sanderson, author of Mistborn and The Way of Kings
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.
From the imaginative mind of debut author Charlie N. Holmberg, The Paper Magician is an extraordinary adventure both dark and whimsical that will delight readers of all ages.
This book is terrible. Really terrible. It's rare that I give 1 star to a book, but in this case it really deserves it. I've bought the paper magician for its beautiful cover and the synopsis, but I was really disappointed. The main protagonist, Ceony, is incredibly whiny and noisy, she doesn't have any respect for her master and she is too curious to be true. She becomes angry when her master doesn't tell her anything about his life, even though they know each other for less than a day. Sooo annoying. The book was short (the italian version has 200 pages more or less) but it felt incredibly long to read. It's supposed to be set at the beginning of the XX century, but the way the characters talk and some aspects of their lives (especially the food) seemed more current and unbelievable. The story was not bad, but it all seemed like a first draft that needed a lot of editorial work and more effort.
