Monday, November 17, 2014

REVIEW: The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

My Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

The continuing story of Ceony Twill and Magician Emory Thane didn't quite live quite up to it's predecessor, The Paper Magician, for me. I'm not sure if I was simply in a different frame of mind this time around or what, but was Ceony this annoying in the first book? If she was, I certainly didn't pick up on it until now.

Ceony has been pining after Emory ever since she saved him in the first book. The bad guys are still on her tail, consistently putting her and everyone around her in danger. But I seriously felt that the emotions she now has for Emory have clouded her judgement, making her quite short-sighted and reckless! Gone is the young girl I fell in love with in The Paper Magician and while she's still headstrong, she's now making foolish decisions and letting her emotions rule her actions, putting everyone in jeopardy with her foolishness.

I also disliked how a certain details in the story would come along and then suddenly be dropped and forgotten. For example, what happened to that super nice safety bicycle Ceony had, the one she took to her luncheon with Delilah with the enchanted tires that wouldn't wear? When she fled the scene, she just left it there, never went back to retrieve it, and it was never mentioned again. Perhaps the author thought it an unimportant detail but it still bugged me that Ceony would treat her belongings so carelessly. Several other things about the way Ceony now acted and thought irked me too, one that was already mentioned by several other reviewers was her thinking that Langston needed a wife because he didn't know how to cook? Puhhlease!

That said, I still liked the story overall, and found it a fast-paced and entertaining read despite it's drawbacks for me. If Ceony wasn't so vexatious this time around, I may have even liked it as much as The Paper Magician.

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