The Paper Magician - Charlie N. Holmberg

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The paper magic was really fun, but literally half the book is spent in someone's memories, which started to drag, and didn't seem to serve much of a purpose besides fostering a one-sided infatuation that I didn't care for much.

Then there's the blood magician threat, which an entire force of magicians and police have been fighting - but Ceony doesn't even get questioned seriously about what happened?

Towards the end, I also began to notice an increase in modern concepts and American words and phrases, when this is supposed to be set in London around the turn of the 20th Century. Needless to say, I found it jarring and irritating.

So it sounds like I didn't like this much. But I liked it well enough. The concept of paper magic was really interesting, and I enjoyed all the details of folding. It just had some distracting aspects and was not as developed as I like. I can see why some people are calling it YA even though Ceony is 18 and out of school. There's something too simple about it to be adult. I was hoping for it to be more than it was, that's all. I think I will probably still pick up the sequel at some point.