“THE PAPER MAGICIAN,” by Charlie N. Holmberg, 47 North, $14.95, 222 pages (f)
Nineteen-year-old Ceony Twill has been focused on learning a particular kind of magic — smelting. It’s one of several kinds of magic that uses a particular material in the world Utah author Charlie N. Holmberg has created in the fantasy novel “The Paper Magician,” which is the first in a series. Smelters use various forms of metal.
After Ceony’s graduation at the top of her class from Tagi Praff School for the Magically Inclined, she was assigned to learn the art of working with paper from one of the few paper magicians left in the discipline.
For her internship, she goes to Magician Emery Thane’s home to be an apprentice. From the home’s façade to the animated paper skeleton that greet her, she quickly learns that this is not anything she expected.
Under Emery’s tutelage, she learns the basics of folding and, when he leaves for a trip, she continues her studies.
Then his ex-wife, Lira, interrupts dinner and shows signs of working with blood, which is forbidden, and steals Emery’s heart. When other magicians come, Ceony is drawn into their investigation into rogue magicians practicing the forbidden blood magic. Her efforts to help save her teacher will use all of the folding he has taught her and take her into his past mistakes, doubts, triumphs and hopes for the future. She also learns how her internship with him might not have been an arbitrary assignment.
Holmberg has created an interesting twist on magic — being bonded to work with a particular material — and the power of choices.
There isn’t any swearing or sexual content. There are several deaths mentioned and descriptions of blood and the workings of a human heart.
The book was a finalist in the young adult speculative novel category for the Association for Mormon Letters’ 2014 awards, which including books, stories, films and screenplays by, for or about members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The second book in the series, “The Glass Magician,” was one of five 2014 Whitney Award finalists in the young adult speculative fiction category. The Whitney Awards recognize novels penned by Mormons.
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