A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (The Shadow Histories, #1)

by H.G. Parry

“I’m not brave like you. I’m not like the ones who fight to take themselves back.

“Pitt, you’ve been in politics for twelve years. You must have noticed by now that even very clever people do misguided things without regard for political consequences all the time. Especially when they’re frustrated and angry.” “I’ve noticed,” he agreed, with a rueful smile of his own. “But I keep expecting them to stop.” “Well, I keep expecting people to stop chaining up human beings and selling them across the oceans.”

And you said once that ‘just this once’ is the most dangerous phrase in the English language.”

This book is a mythologization of the real history of Britain, France, and Haiti in the eighteenth century, which is more interesting and dramatic and downright weird than anything I could make up.