The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician, #1) in Pop Sugar's Annual Ultimate Reading Challenge

May 01, 2015 Sue Thompson rated it liked it

The name I give to books like this is "palate cleanser". I read a lot of classic novels and heavier reading but I find books like this are perfect for refreshing the mind and taking the weight off a bit. Therefore I will never judge these under the same terms as I will judge my usual reading material.
With that in mind I really liked this book, the concept that one focuses upon one material and builds up one's experience and ability with it is a great take on the popular theme of magic, and in my ...more

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Sep 20, 2015 Amanda rated it liked it

Torn between 2 and 3 stars.

The Good: I love the magic in this world. The paper magic was beautiful and whimsical and I desperately wanted to see more of it. I really liked Thane. He was thoughtful and just enough of an absent minded professor to be incredibly charming.

The Meh: The story is nominally set in (fantasy) 1900s London, but it doesn’t really feel like it. There are occasional references to telegraphs and places, but the language used by characters and the day to day things in the sto Torn between 2 and 3 stars.

The Good: I love the magic in this world. The paper magic was beautiful and whimsical and I desperately wanted to see more of it. I really liked Thane. He was thoughtful and just enough of an absent minded professor to be incredibly charming.

The Meh: The story is nominally set in (fantasy) 1900s London, but it doesn’t really feel like it. There are occasional references to telegraphs and places, but the language used by characters and the day to day things in the story feel more out of time and place than really embodying their setting. This a setting I normally really enjoy, so I was bummed to have it not really feel like it at all.

The beginning of the story is strong, but then dissolved into a series of flashbacks that just feel like lazy character development. The interesting world we are introduced to is more or less abandoned for weird magic stuff. The set up for the story is great, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

The Bad: The shoehorned, rushed, one sided, 11 year age gap after knowing each other less than a month romance. This story could have been so much better without it. A solid mentor/pupil story would have been great and if the characters developed a romance later in the series it might not have felt so off putting. Instead we get a creepy hot for teacher subplot that basically hijacks the ending entirely.

I cannot stress enough how uncomfortable the 11 year age difference makes me. It doesn’t pass the half your age plus seven test. It’s creepy. I don’t care if it could be “normal” for the time period, your readers are modern and her behavior sends up all the red flags. A slow burn romance taking place over YEARS could have possibly made this work (you know, when she isn’t 19), but as written I am not rooting for this couple. And ending it with a prophecy that seems to set the fate of the relationship in stone did nothing to make me feel any better about it.

Oh, and the character with a perfect memory trope can go die in a fire. It adds nothing to the story that being an above average student couldn’t have accomplished without it. It just makes the character pretentious, harder to relate to, and adds weird plot holes when you consider the actual implications of a “perfect” memory. ...more

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