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A review by ninegladiolus
Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Davinia Evans’ Notorious Sorcerer is a fun, fast-paced, action-packed debut. Fans of the Shades of Magic trilogy will find a lot to love about this plane-hopping, world-shifting adventure, and the witty scrappiness of protagonist Siyon Velo is laugh-inducing and heart-aching by turns.
Siyon Velo is an inter-planar errand boy, retrieving reagents for the city’s privileged class of alchemists to use in their carefully controlled experiments. Scraping by tidbits of alchemical knowledge along with his paltry sums, Siyon’s star quickly rises when he performs an impossible feat in plain view of the city… a city in danger of invasion from other realms as the magic of their own fails.
Besides Siyon, there are several other characters whose point of view we get through the novel. Their perspectives combine to create a skillful tapestry of Bezim and its inhabitants. Feisty Zagiri, measured Anahid, and adventurous Izmirlian all have strong character arcs; I looked forward to each of their POV sections as much as Siyon’s. A broad cast of supporting characters adds a lived in vibrancy to the world.
I’d be remiss not to mention how… well, MAGICAL the magic system is. Tactile in execution and imaginative in scope, it has enough of the occult to feel mysterious and enough suggestion of structure to feel scientific. The true draw for me was in the glimpses we get of other planes and their worlds.
While this is tightly paced, the streamlined pacing often at the expense of character interactions. With the exception of the (queer!) romantic subplot, we don’t get a lot of introspective character moments, and because of that, the emotional character beats didn’t always land for me. And as much as I loved the ideas in the worldbuilding, at times it felt a bit flimsy and hand-wavy; since this is a trilogy, I expect we’ll get more depth as we go on.
Reading Notorious Sorcerer was like having an entertaining movie playing in my head. With evocative descriptions, high stakes, and strong character voice, this solid fantasy debut holds a lot of promise. I’ll definitely be continuing with subsequent entries in the series.
Thank you to Orbit and Edelweiss for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.
Siyon Velo is an inter-planar errand boy, retrieving reagents for the city’s privileged class of alchemists to use in their carefully controlled experiments. Scraping by tidbits of alchemical knowledge along with his paltry sums, Siyon’s star quickly rises when he performs an impossible feat in plain view of the city… a city in danger of invasion from other realms as the magic of their own fails.
Besides Siyon, there are several other characters whose point of view we get through the novel. Their perspectives combine to create a skillful tapestry of Bezim and its inhabitants. Feisty Zagiri, measured Anahid, and adventurous Izmirlian all have strong character arcs; I looked forward to each of their POV sections as much as Siyon’s. A broad cast of supporting characters adds a lived in vibrancy to the world.
I’d be remiss not to mention how… well, MAGICAL the magic system is. Tactile in execution and imaginative in scope, it has enough of the occult to feel mysterious and enough suggestion of structure to feel scientific. The true draw for me was in the glimpses we get of other planes and their worlds.
While this is tightly paced, the streamlined pacing often at the expense of character interactions. With the exception of the (queer!) romantic subplot, we don’t get a lot of introspective character moments, and because of that, the emotional character beats didn’t always land for me. And as much as I loved the ideas in the worldbuilding, at times it felt a bit flimsy and hand-wavy; since this is a trilogy, I expect we’ll get more depth as we go on.
Reading Notorious Sorcerer was like having an entertaining movie playing in my head. With evocative descriptions, high stakes, and strong character voice, this solid fantasy debut holds a lot of promise. I’ll definitely be continuing with subsequent entries in the series.
Thank you to Orbit and Edelweiss for an advance review copy. All opinions are my own.