Tag: Charlie N. Holmberg

Charlie N. Holmberg

Oh, this was a delight of a read. Sort of a slow burn overall, but it made it very effective at building up over time. By the halfway point I didn’t want to put it down, and at 4/5 of the way through I couldn’t. In a way, it’s a lot of filler, but it’s beautiful filler, and without the filler it’d be too quick. It’s the fun of digging through the filler to find the little pieces of the puzzle.

My favorite moment, and this will be a spoiler, is reading the very careful, analytical description of an artifact of the Ancients, and saying to myself “it’s a sundial. Obviously it’s a sundial. How have you not figured this out?” And then we get to see this lovely analytic mind of the viewpoint protagonist answer that question: why would you know what a sundial is on a planet that isn’t rotating? Would you look at that, the title makes sense.

As I said, an absolute delight to read. The protagonist is building something, and I get that seem feeling of building towards something as I try to piece together the mysteries. Give it a read.¹

1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩

Charlie N. Holmberg

This book caught my attention so much more thoroughly than I expected it to. The magic system is fascinating: we start off with the titular character, a spellbreaker—one of a small group of people born with the natural ability to break spells cast by others. And, as it turns out, to sense their presence in a way that the actual spellcasters (or, as they’re called, aspectors) cannot. It goes into more detail: there’s four types of spells, and the way the casting system works feels… honestly a great deal like it was originally designed to be the setting for a videogame. Learn a spell by consuming Magic Points, and then after that you can cast it at will until you’re tired out and need to rest? That’s a writer, explaining a game mechanic.

So, we have a fascinating setting. And then we have two fascinating characters: Bacchus Kelsey, a wealthy scion, up for his mastery examinations in magic… and running face-first into a wall of “it is the 1800s and Britain is very racist”. And then there’s Elsie Camden, the (illegally) unregistered spellbreaker, who lives a double life. Mild-mannered—or rather, well-raised and -behaved—administrative assistant by day, vigilante spellbreaker by night, going on secretive missions to help the downtrodden masses. Magic, after all, may be magic, but it’s also a form of power… and power corrupts.

I was locked in to the book fairly early on, but by the end I couldn’t put it down. An absolutely delightful read, I highly encourage you to check it out.¹

1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩