2021/157: Sorcerer to the Crown -- Zen Cho

2021/157: Sorcerer to the Crown -- Zen Cho

In truth magic had always had a slightly un-English character, being unpredictable, heedless of tradition and profligate with its gifts to high and low. [p. 22]

I'd started this novel several times and hadn't engaged: it must have been a case of 'right book, wrong time' because when I settled down with it, I was delighted. Yes, the premise (Regency England, with magicians) is reminiscent of other works, most notably Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but the execution is very different. Cho's protagonists -- Zacharias Wythe, a freed slave who has become Sorcerer Royal, and Prunella Gentleman, a young woman whose English father and Indian mother are both dead, leaving her to assist at a school for 'gentlewitches' -- have to maintain good manners in the face of constant microaggressions.( Read more... )