Favorite Fantasy Series

Now is the time to start stocking your to-read pile with heavy tomes of magic, mystery, and far off places! September, October, and November are by far my favorite months of the year. Fall can feel so fleeting compared to the long winters, so I absolutely relish the chance to match my reading picks to the mood outside. I love reading books with darker settings, gruff and moody protagonists, and bits of magic sprinkled throughout. You'll probably be hearing a lot about my fall picks this year, but I thought I'd get started with a list of my favorite fantasy series.

The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling // I mean, I can't start this list without my favorite of favorites. Harry Potter is suitable reading for any time of year, but I especially love snuggling up with any one of the books in this series during our cozier months.

The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness // Fun fact: the author of this series is an alumna of the very place that I am now attending for my Master's program. I raved about this trilogy last year and am hoping to re-read it sometime soon. It has witches, vampires, time travel, romance, suspense -- basically anything you could hope for in an Autumn read.

The Paper Magician Trilogy by Charlie N. Holmberg // This is another one that I'd be happy to re-read. I own the series on my Kindle but the covers are some of my favorites. The premise is super inventive and I find the story to be comforting. Ceony Twill is one of my all-time favorite female characters, too. You can read my review of the first in the series here.

The Mapmakers Trilogy by S.E. Grove // I just finished the second installment in this trilogy over the weekend and absolutely loved it. I sound like a broken record when it comes to this one but I'll say it again: this is some of the best world building I've come across in my many years of reading fantasy. You can read my review of the first one here. This is one of those series that I just happened to stumble upon and then fall totally in love with (don't you love when that happens?) I cannot wait for the final installment!

The City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte // This is another (unfinished) series that I've really enjoyed so far. It's not terribly complicated but the cast of characters is really quirky and I'm looking forward to the next in the series.

A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R. R. Martin // Also a no-brainer for this list. This is an epic series that I watched on TV before I started the books, and although I'm not usually a proponent of TV-before-book, in this case it helped me to visualize the enormous cast of characters that span these books.

Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Series by Ransom Riggs // I've only read the first in this series (the third just came out recently) but it's one that's stuck with me since. I recently bought the second and have been saving it for those cooler, darker days.

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I made this list with older audiences in mind, though I believe a few of these are classified as young adult series. I've stumbled upon a few more series that I want to dive into before the year is over, so keep an eye out for those as my favorite reading season commences!

If you're a lover of children's lit, you might also want to check back here on Thursday for a little surprise!

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Happy Reading!

-Madeleine-

Review: The Master Magician

{Click here to view it on Goodreads}

~WARNING~

If you haven't yet read the first two books in this series, and you think that you might be interested in reading this series, then you should stop reading right here, because I am about to ruin everything for you. All of the surprises will be gone. So, if you want to find out why I love this series so much, click  here to read my review of the first book and then, once you've read all of them, come back and find this review. If you don't know whether or not you might want to read this book, then let me give you a short list of books that it reminds me of: Jane Eyre + Pride & Prejudice + Harry Potter, with its own twist and a wonderfully creative world that is something along the lines of magical realism (where magic is simply accepted as a part of day-to-day life). And if you have read the first two books but haven't read this one yet (it was published on June 2, for those who didn't have it pre-ordered), then go read it now (and come back later)!

Now that I've added a sufficient disclaimer, I can begin to tell you about this book, which is the third installment in the Paper Magician trilogy by Charlie N. Holmberg. I am rarely the type of person who gets hyped up about a series to this level-- really, only Harry Potter has made the cut in the past. So after I stumbled upon the first book in the series by accident on my Kindle, I was surprised to find myself pre-ordering the next two in the trilogy and eagerly awaiting their release dates. I love this story because I love its main character and the way that she fits (or doesn't fit) into her community. 

Ceony Twill is an exceptionally brilliant young woman who takes it upon herself to excel through secondary school and win a scholarship to be a magician's apprentice. In Ceony's world (which is set in a Victorian-esque era), magicians are a part of everyday life. Rather than all being lumped together, however, they belong to a category of magical occupations that focus on the manipulation of one material. There are smelters working with metal, gaffers working with glass, excisioners (who are evil unless they're certified to be a doctor) who work with human flesh, etc. Ceony is forced into an apprenticeship of folding, which is the manipulation of paper. She's disappointed at first, but in the first two installments she comes to find that the life of a folder doesn't have to be dull. At the end of the second book, Ceony and Emery's relationship finally became what it was meant to be, and at the beginning of the third book, they've settled into a comfortable routine of light affection while they await Ceony's magician test, after which Emery will no longer be her mentor and they will be free to make their relationship public (or more public than it already is, at least). 

The problem is that Saraj Prendi is back-- and this is where I ran into my first problem with the book. Saraj is just kind of a blah character overall, and I wish that there had been more development to his character in this book. Mostly he just pops out of hiding when it's convenient so that he can give Ceony a heart attack and then go back into the shadows while she chases after him. Ceony is just as fearless as ever, and my favorite part about this book was how she defied social norms by becoming a master of all the magic materials. Her determinedness is something that I really admire, and I love that she can be so incredibly talented and intelligent without needing to be praised by others. She's perfectly happy to keep her brilliance to herself. Let's not forget Emery either, whose quirks are endearing and who has a fiercely protective side when it comes to Ceony, despite the fact that he has zero control in their relationship (which I found funny and refreshing for this time period).  

I could go on and on about different parts of the story, but the gist of it is that I really enjoy this series and would recommend it to so many readers. There were only two issues that I had with this last book: the matter of finding and killing Saraj (it just didn't feel as dangerous as the first two books), and the ending. I know, I know...the ending was kind of perfect in its own way, but I wanted more. In fact, I want another book (or four) in this series. So I found myself wrinkling my nose at the last sentence because I just didn't want it to end, and I felt like Holmberg shut the door without letting me see the best part. I'll still be keeping this series close at hand for re-reading this year, because despite its flaws, it's become one of my all-time favorites.

Bottom Line Rating: 5/5

Title: The Master Magician

Author: Charlie N. Holmberg

Publisher: 47North, June 2015

Price: $4.99

ASIN: BOOP1N03G8

Format: E-book

Source: Amazon Kindle Store

Review: The Paper Magician

This is one new fantasy series that I am so excited to follow -- if you like stories about witches, then The Paper Magician is a perfect novel to add to your reading stack. Ceony Twill is a recent graduate of the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, but she feels that her year of hard work there is wasted when she's assigned to be apprenticed as a paper magician. Ceony had dreamt of being a smelter (a metal magician) but with the paper magicians' population dwindling, she has no choice but to live with and learn from the eccentric Magician Emery Thane. As her apprenticeship progresses, Ceony realizes that there is an elegance to the paper craft. She learns to animate paper creatures and to bring the words in a storybook to life, but her lessons are interrupted when Magician Thane is attacked by an Excisioner- a practitioner of the darkest art, flesh magic. Thane's heart is (literally) stolen, and Ceony takes it upon herself to bring it back. Setting out to save Thane's life means an adventure that Ceony would never have dreamt of, and though she puts herself in terrible danger, she learns that paper magic is far more powerful than she thought.

I'm not even sure how I stumbled across this book on my Kindle last week, but before I knew it I was halfway through and raving about it to anyone that would listen. If I were to sum up this book in one word it would be: quirky. I loved it. What drew me in is the classic character of a girl freshly graduated from prepatory school, with big ideas about the world, intelligence, and spunk. In The Paper Magician, Ceony resigns herself to becoming a Folder, but soon she realizes that you get out what you put into it, and her eagerness to learn had me hooked. I also loved that she has depth to her character: she loves to cook, has an enviable work ethic, and there's something tragic being alluded to in her past (albeit that something isn't revealed until the end). I also thought the whole concept of the book was creative; there are a lot of books written about magic and this one is unique for sure, especially with its different divisions of magical occupations. Though this book only came out on the first of September, the second installment in the trilogy is set to be published in November. You know I can't resist a good series, so I may have pre-ordered the second on my Kindle. Oh, and did I mention that this is Holmberg's debut? Bravo.

Bottom Line Rating: 5/5

Title: The Paper Magician

Author: Charlie L. Holmberg

Publisher: 47North, 2014

Price: $4.99 (in the Amazon Kindle store)

ISBN: 1477823832

Format: E-book

Source: Kindle

Book #39 of 2014