She’s quite depressed at the prospect of bonding with what she considers to be the most boring of all the materials, but while students’ inclinations are taken into consideration, ultimately the board decides which apprentices bond with which material – so paper it is. Ceony has been more or less forced to accept a position as a paper magician (a Folder) because there aren’t enough Folders. In the first book, we start with Ceony, on her first day as an apprentice, arriving at the home of her new mentor. Ceony is one of those characters who ALWAYS knows what’s best and is constantly ignoring everyone around her and doing whatever she wants because she is SO CLEVER. I didn’t like her from the very beginning – and I kept not liking her through the rest of the series. Part of the problem was the main character, Ceony. By halfway through the second book, I was getting incredibly bored, and I basically skimmed the entire third book just to make sure of how things were going to turn out – which wasn’t too hard to guess, as the entire storyline was absurdly predictable. But I think this was a case where I allowed myself to get so interested in the concept that it took me a while to notice that the actual story was kind of terrible. I found myself wondering how this would apply to a modern variation of this world, and I was really interested in how this applied to the everyday lives of non-magicians. This leaves room for so many different side trails of intrigue and interest, and I was way into it. This isn’t because of a law or rule – it’s just the way the magic works. Once the bonding spell has been cast, there is no going back – a magician can only work with his bonded material. When students become apprentices, they bond with a specific material.

In school, students learn about the different types of magic – each kind adheres to a different material: glass, paper, plastic, metal, fire, etc. People attend a school and are then apprenticed before becoming full-fledged magicians. However, magic can’t be used all willy-nilly by just anyone. These books are set in an alternative universe (it feels like around 1900) wherein magic is a reality. NB: There is a spin-off book set in the same universe, The Plastic Magician, which I didn’t bother reading because I was over these books. The Aroma of Books //Rants//Raves//Reviews// Pargeter, Edith (also writing as Ellis Peters).Mertz, Barbara (also writing as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels).Christie, Agatha (also writing as Mary Westmacott).Children’s History: Landmark, Signature Biographies, and We Were There.#BookSpin & #BookSpinBingo (Litsy Challenge).

The paper magician series