The Paper Magician - Charlie N. Holmberg

Date Started: 10/2/14
Date Finished: 10/4/14

Confusing, oh so confusing.

This story drops you right into the action. Great, right? Well, yes, except that (1) I had no idea WHEN this was taking place or (2) any information that made me care about the high-stakes issue of being assigned as a "paper" magician (vs. glass, plastic, or any of the other man-made elements a magician could choose). But I kept reading...

By no means was this an awful book - it was engaging, fast-paced, and certainly made you feel vested in the ending, eventually. I just wanted to care more than I did, and I wanted more of the action to take place in the real world vs. in the "heart" the main character has to travel through.

Here's the Amazon summary:

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.

And - spoiler alert - Ceony wins (the Excisioner is Thane's ex-wife, Lena)! But will her visions of being with Thane and having his kids ultimately come true? Who knows, maybe that's answered in the rest of the series.

Side note: Why is EVERYTHING a series these days?

Ultimately, I don't know that I invested enough in the characters to read the next book.