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Title: Mairelon the Magician by Patricia Wrede ISBN: 0-7653-4232-4 Publisher: Starscape Pub. Date: 15 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (37 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful Regency Fantasy!
Comment: This book was written for people who love Jane Austen and enjoy a good story about magic. This one is set on the streets of London and in the English countryside. Kim is a street kid who makes a living as a thief...and a good one! When Kim breaks into the wagon of a performance magician named Mairelon, however, the magician turns out to be real. What's more, the magician knows Kim's carefully-guarded secret. Kim is a girl.
Fortunately, Mairelon is more intrigued than angry about Kim's trying to rob him, and he offers her a new profession--that of stage assistant to the great Mairelon himself. As she travels the English countryside with him and his delightfully gloomy henchman Hunch, she discovers that Mairelon's magic is more than a show, and that he himself is wrapped up in some dark business which he will, undoubtedly, need her help to escape.
This is a madcap adventure full of laughs, with colorful and kooky characters, spies, magicians, druids (or at least aspiring druids), and a delightful French woman who escaped the unpleasantness with Napolean. Read this, and read Patricia Wrede's other fantastic Regency Fantasies, Mairelon's sequel Magician's Ward, and the delightful epistolary novel Sorcery & Cecilia
Rating: 5
Summary: Charming
Comment: Recently brought back into print by Starscape books, "Mairelon the Magician" is a delightful Regency period fantasy by the author of the famous "Forest Chronicles." Though this book has a radically different setting and a very different manner, Wrede's style is quite recognizable.
A "skinny toff" hires the street thief Kim to sneak into a street magician's wagon and look around for a silver platter. Kim, a teenage girl who disguises herself as a boy, is all too willing to do so for the grand sum of five pounds. But when a silent explosion hits her inside the wagon, Kim reluctantly is convinced that Mairelon the Magician's magic is real. Mairelon hears her story about the man who hired her, and then asks her to come along as his apprentice and assistant. Kim, with the less savory characters of London closing in, agrees quickly.
She soon is told what the deal with the silver platter is: It is the Saltash Platter, a magical silver dish that a lot of people seem to want. She and Mairelon go on a secret expedition through the English countryside, where they find an ever-complicating mystery around the Platter. The wizard and the lock picker must unravel the mystery and find out who is responsible.
It sounds dry and lackluster, but never is. Wrede sets the plot in a world quite like our own, but with a magic tinge, such as a mention of the Wizards' College, the attempts to get the Platter, and a real magician performing in the streets. However, she never overburdens the reader with her cleverness, as too many authors are prone to do. The plot is complex, but not overly so. And whenever it seems in danger of becoming too dry or serious, Wrede provides a humorous situation or line to lighten the mood.
The humor is quite different than in the Forest Chronicles. It's drier, wittier, slightly older in tone: The verbal sparring between Mairelon, Kim and Hunch; Mairelon's frequent grammatical corrections; several fake Platters floating around; and a cluster of pseudo-druids who dump their hodgepodge rituals when they find that they don't have the "Sacred Dish." The dialogue is entirely realistic and filled with old London street slang, such as Kim informing someone that he is "bosky."
Kim is an intriguingly tough heroine, with clear vision and a wish to get out of the streets where she has spent her life. Mairelon is witty and smart, but never strikes the reader as cocky or obnoxious. He's too pleasant for that. Hunch is crabby and perpetually suspicious, but somehow interesting anyway. The other supporting characters, in true Wrede style, range from menacing to mysterious to almost comical.
Sadly, there is only one sequel to this fun fantasy. Fortunately, Starscape will be reprinting "Magician's Ward" later this year, so that more readers can enjoy further adventures in Wrede's magical Regency period. A delightful mystery/fantasy, and definitely worth the read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Mairelon the Magician
Comment: Mairelon the Magician comes into town. Kim doesn't think much of it, except that she likes to watch the magic shows. But then someone approaches her, offering her money to look inside the magicians tent to see if there is a certain bowl in there. Being a thief mostly taken for a boy, Kim agrees to this, though even for that amount of money she is not terribly happy about sneaking into a magicians tent. But she does. She finds the bowl, but when trying to open a magically locked chest, Kim is knocked unconscious. She is discovered, and soon agrees to go away with Mairelon - though she doesn't trust him, with him taking her along for nothing except information. But as they go along, Kim discovers more about this strange magician, and the plot he is tied up in.
A great book for people of all ages.
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Title: Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot: Being the Correspondence of Two Young Ladies of Quality Regarding Various Magical Scandals in London and the Country by Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede ISBN: 0152046151 Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer ISBN: 0765342456 Publisher: Starscape Pub. Date: 13 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles : [Boxed Set ] by Patricia C. Wrede ISBN: 0152050523 Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede ISBN: 0590972189 Publisher: Scholastic Pub. Date: January, 1998 List Price(USD): $4.50 |
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Title: Talking to Dragons: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Book Four by Patricia C. Wrede ISBN: 0152046917 Publisher: Magic Carpet Books Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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