Tome Thursday: Magicom

 

Hello everyone!
 

Welcome to this week's bookish blog post.

 

And apologies for missing last week's. Unfortunately, RL conspired against me so I had to be responsible for a bit and skip some of the things I otherwise love dearly.

 

Don't you just hate when that happens?

 

Either way, I'm back tonight, and unless there's more unforeseen problems on the horizon, I'm hopeful I won't have to be skipping anything else any time soon!

 

Onwards.

 

Tonight's choice of book is another ARC I was very kindly sent by a lovely Goodreads author, which I totally wasn't expecting, by the way. I generally don't jump around waving ARCS AHOY THIS WAY! haha.

 

But I picked it up, and was very easily and quickly hooked. It's just that kind of a great book, you see. So why don't we take a brief look what I'm talking about with Magicom?

 

Seeing as I don't have anything else by this author, there are no links down at the bottom the way they usually would be.

 

Magicom follows the parallel stories of August Silvershield and his sister Pink. 

 

August is a rebel, leader and figurehead of the group Ashes, which are fighting against the tyranny of the eponymous Magicom, basically a sort of army of magic-users that are strong, corrupt, and have support from the government because the government could very easily be disposed of.

 

The world August lives in is powered by magic, but to use it and unlock its potential, you have to consume arcannen - potions that weirdly sound like something Geralt might take before heading off into battle with one of his monsters. 

 

And Magicom controls arcannen.

 

Ergo, August tends to hit locations where he and his followers can grab the potions and flee into the night, distributing them among the populace a bit more freely than what Magicom are doing.

 

As such, and because of a raid directed against the faction's HQ, he's a dead man walking, the most wanted person in the land, which is why his sister Pink is VERY keen on keeping their connection a secret.

 

See, she's training in the Wing, the institution from which all mages originate, kind of like Hogwarts but if it was run just by McGonagall and Hagrid, and after successfully qualifying, she's assigned her first contract by her mentor.

 

Only, her mentor isn't the one she was hoping to have, but someone else entirely (he turns out to have connections to her brother, too, in the end), and he doesn't seem to care about the contract all that much? I mean, he pretty much leaves Pink and the others in their crew to investigate the disappearances people have been notifying Wing of, thinking it might be one of the magical beasts that ate them or something.

 

When a large group of Wing mages are sent to the mines to clear out a supposed nest, and don't return in a timely manner, however, Pink takes matters into her own hands (her crew included, of course), and finds out something by far more terrifying than a manabeast.

 

She finds humans. The missing humans. Using manabeast magic, a feat impossible and unheard of.

 

And the only other clues they've uncovered are tracks that can only belong to Magicom.

 

When it turns out that the temporary leader of Wing in its official one's absence is behind the experiments which transform people into mana-SOMETHING that can use magic at will without the need for arcannen potions, welp, it should have been all over for Pink and her buddies.

 

Thankfully, their mentor learned a thing or two back in his own academic days with August, and springs them, but by that point it's all converging.

 

Pink knows that Magicom will now stop at nothing to get to her brother, using the execution of his best friend and one of his most loyal followers to draw him out.

 

How very Robin Hood of them, I must say. Kevin Cosnter would be proud.

 

August has, of course, spent the entirety of the book planning and plotting to get said captive out of Magicom hands, having promised the man's younger brother that he would do so. It's incredible to read how one person can be quite this intelligent and witty, two steps ahead at every turn, sussing out a journalist in their midst as well as knowingly springing a trap so that he can save someone who doesn't deserve to die, without handicapping him for once.

 

The little brother is a bit of a pain in the butt LOL in that he seems to keep getting away with things you wouldn't normally thing someone 12 years old would, but as it's fantasy, I suppose we have to suspend our disbelief a little.

 

I mean, the kid uses an invisibility powder to sneak into a high security prison, trying to save his big bro! Somehow that makes sense?

 

Anyway, Ashes runs right up against Magicom's new Super Soldiers that have none of Captain America's charisma, after Pink meets up with August to warn him about what he can expect. What she DOESN'T count on, however, is one of her buddies, Sol, who she's developing feelings for, betraying them to Magicom because he's hell-bent on joining their ranks.

 

Even though he can see what kind of chaos the general is prepared to unleash and how badly that tyrannical reign will be, he seems apologetic in an 'oh but August Is So Bad' kind of way that makes you want to facepalm and smack him silly.

 

He has enough remorse left that he frees Pink, who runs to help her brother, but after the disaster of the general losing control of his mana-humans and them attacking the crowds, the government is very much of a mind to remove him. His second-in-command helps with this particular coup, and despite the fact the general did in fact get his hands on August, using Pink to try and control how the man would die, the government basically brokers a plea deal to help cover up what happened.

 

In the end, the general's the one that dies, and August walks.

 

Pink and her friends return to Wing to continue undertaking magical contracts, and she even gets to meet up with her brother at the very end once more, so there's SOME happy ending in this book, considering how all the paths diverged. But at least we saved the buddy and got to mourn who we lost in peace, right? Right.

 

This is a kind of fantasy book of a kind I haven't read in a WHILE. Instantly gripping, following two groups of characters running parallel and converging at the end point, merging elements of Robin Hood, Harry Potter and The Witcher in a steampunk mish-mash of intense action.

The magic system is easy to understand, the world feels very lived in, and each character shines in different ways that make them each unique and relatable.

Perhaps my only quibble would be that the 12-year-old younger brother character, as I mentioned before.

The book feels complete but offers the great potential of there being sequels in future. So if you like action, mystery, a tiny hint of romance, and above all magic, I definitely suggest you pick this up.

10/10 recommend. 

 

xx

*image not mine