Unnatural Magic
May 25, 2020 7:02 AM - by Waggoner, C. M. - Subscribe

Onna can write the parameters of a spell faster than any of the young men in her village school. But despite her incredible abilities, she’s denied a place at the nation’s premier arcane academy. Tsira is a troll who never quite fit into her clan, despite being the leader’s daughter. She decides to strike out on her own and look for work in a human city, but on her way she stumbles upon the body of a half-dead human soldier in the snow. As she slowly nurses him back to health, an unlikely bond forms between them, one that is tested when an unknown mage makes an attempt on Tsira’s life. Soon, unbeknownst to each other, Onna and Tsira both begin devoting their considerable talents to finding out who is targeting trolls before their homeland is torn apart.
posted by dinty_moore (3 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This was a fun, if slow paced read - not quite cozy, but still getting there. I was surprised to be a lot more invested in Tsira's storyline than Onna's, but I don't think I was ever irritated by the switch in points of view. Magic essentially works like physics or coding, and there was enough hinted at in this world that I'd read another book written in this universe.

So the main pairing in this is M/F, but all of the main characters are casually bisexual and troll gender is orthogonal to human gender in this (plus Tsira's physique doesn't match what's expected of her gender), so it still felt fairly queer.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:10 AM on May 25, 2020


I felt that this book was really good but the pacing was all off in a very first book kind of way. I enjoyed it a lot and look forward to more books, in this world or not.
posted by jeather at 7:03 PM on May 25, 2020


I felt like it was an explorative novel, trying out different storylines almost in a TV-series sort of way - like here's this world and here are various episodes. As I was reading, I kept thinking how great it'd be filmed.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:25 PM on May 28, 2020


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