Synopsis
A great deal is happening in London and the country this season.
For starters, there’s the witch who tried to poison Kate at the Royal College of Wizards. There’s also the man who seems to be spying on Cecelia. (Though he’s not doing a very good job of it–so just what are his intentions?) And then there’s Oliver. Ever since he was turned into a tree, he hasn’t bothered to tell anyone where he is.
Clearly, magic is a deadly and dangerous business. And the girls might be in fear for their lives… if only they weren’t having so much fun!
Review
Sorcery and Cecelia is written as a series of letters between two young women in Regency England. Kate is in London for her first season with her younger sister, Georgiana. Georgie is prettier and more likely to find a match but can’t debut in society if her elder sister hasn’t yet. Cecelia remains in Essex, not permitted her first season this year.
The story takes a few letters to get going. Magic exists in this world but the girls have no involvement with magic at the start beyond having a wizard neighbor. Kate stumbles – quite literally – into magic and the story really gets going. Their stories intertwine artfully, with some characters traveling between the two locations and the exchange of information in the letters being vital to both.
In the afterward, the authors explain that this story was written as a series of in-character letters they sent to each other. They didn’t discuss the plot outside of those letters and afterward cleaned up loose ends and timing issues in editing. It fits together so seamlessly, I forgot two authors were listed for this book!
The audiobook is nice but the reader does not differentiate the voices for Cecelia and Kate. Any time I picked the book back up, it was a struggle to remember who was writing the current letter. Both girls are accompanied by a killjoy aunt and young men whose names appear on every “top baby names” list from the last hundred years, which doesn’t help. But Cecelia’s nickname “Cecy” sounds like “Circe” which is very entertaining when she lives with an aunt who disapproves of magic.
This is a cozy fantasy before “cozy” became a descriptor for books, much less its own subgenre. Recommended for readers of cozy fantasy, cozy romance, and gaslamp fantasy. If you want excitement and adventure, seek elsewhere.
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