Mairelon and The Magician's Ward - A Matter of Magic

"A Matter of Magic" is a reissue of Patricia Wrede's two Regency fantasies: "Mairelon the Magician" and "The Magician's Apprentice."

It's getting so I can't read a Regency novel without becoming irritated by the author's attempt at thieves' cant, fake French accents, and high-class drawls. Most of the authors seem to borrow from Georgette Heyer and Joan Aikman, so we have Regency toffs, coves, sharps, and trulls as filtered through at least three generations of authors (I'm assuming Heyer and Aikman got most of their patois from authors like Jane Austen, who actually lived during England's Regency period). It's hard on the ear and should be as dead as a Vaudeville sketch of some beleaguered minority.

Americans are particularly bad at trying to fake English speech patterns two hundred years dead. I wish they'd stop trying, especially the good ones like Patricia Wrede who can actually tell a story.

"Mairelon the Magician" is an amusing comedy of manners--more dialogue than magic, and you have to memorize long lists of characters who keep showing up at the most inconvenient moments, such as in the midst of a burglary or an attempted elopement. The two main characters, Mairelon the magician and the street waif, Kim are sharply drawn and likeable. Everyone else is distinguished by a funny accent, or some sort of annoying habit such as chewing on the ends of their mustache. I was minded to lean across the campfire and club Hutch with a piece of firewood the next time he put his mustache in his mouth.

"The Magician's Ward" is the sequel to "Mairelon the Magician" and features the same lead characters: Richard Merrill, a.k.a. Mairelon the Magician, who turns out to be a toff, and his ward Kim, the former street thief.

Those who prefer their fantasy straight up might be bored with all of the romance bits: Aunt Agatha's attempts to introduce her 'niece' to Polite Society and find her a husband; all of the long, dull trips to the modiste; the requisite carriage ride through Hyde Park; the coming-out ball; the visit to the opera and various upper-crust house parties. Blah blah. Regency romance aficionados could write these parts in their sleep.

The less structured part of the novel involves magic. A burglar dressed like a gentleman attempts to steal a book from the Mairelon's library. Kim visits one of her former friends, a used clothes merchant, and learns that a moneylender of their acquaintance is scarpering up all of London's street magicians for his own nefarious purposes. Somehow, the moneylender coordinates an attack on one of the street witches, then Mairelon, himself. Both are stripped of their magic, and one eventually goes crazy.

Kim must somehow rescue her guardian and restore his magic while attending to the details of her coming-out ball, and all of the other fripperies and fribbles that Regency society demands of her.

This duo of Regency fantasies is okay, but I prefer the author's 'Lyra' series.

The dangers in this book are hardly world shattering, and the magic usually subtle rather than huge and showy.

I first read this book as the two individual books Mairelon the Magician and The Magician's Ward. Each could stand alone, but having read them in order helped to understand the characters quite a bit.

And these 2 stories are about characters. Kim, the street thief who disguises herself as a boy and specializes in housebreaking at teh start of the tale grows from that timid, but brave thief into an intelligent and passionate magician in her own right, while Richard Merrill aka Mairelon comes across as the perfect son of wealth who clearly wants to do great things, but also doesn't want to take life to seriously. the two characters play off each other and the surrounding cast building a believable romance while solving mysteries and encountering magic.

The mysteries are not deep, but they are well thoought out and imaginative. Which makes this a bit better than many young ault mysteries available. And Patricia Wrede is clearly writing in a world that she cares about as teh characters and atmosphere is lovingly if not painstakingly detailed.

Definitely a good read for lovers of light fantasy. This book doesn't really try to push the limits on the rather basic plot, but the quality of the writing and the care put into making the characters much more than words on a page made this one book I highly recommend.

Patricia Wrede is one of my favorite "comfort reading" authors. She writes fun fantasies, with characters you'd love to meet; exciting, funny, and sweet by turns -- or all at once! And I never hit one of those "clunk" moments with her, where other authors' flow and/or vocabulary occasionally fall short or go awry.
I'm automatically rating this 5 stars based on the contents. I like the new cover art, but I don't know how well they did re. typos, etc., in this edition. I own the original MMPBs + the SFBC HC omnibus, which is titled "Magic & Malice". The SFBC jacket is a bit hokey, and the binding surely can't last through too many more readings, so I may actually wind up buying this one some time soon.

N.B. If you like this duology, be sure to also read her novel-of-letters Kate & Cecy collaborations with Caroline Stevermer, which also feature Regency England/Europe with the Royal College of Wizards: #1 Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot / #2 The Grand Tour (the full title of which is actually "The Grand Tour : Being a Revelation of Matters of High Confidentiality and Greatest Importance, Including Extracts from the Intimate Diary of a Noblewoman and the Sworn Testimony of a Lady of Quality") / #3 The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After: Being the Private Correspondence Between Two Prominent FamiliesRegarding a Scandal Touching the Highest Levels of Government and the Security of the Realm

I love having this omnibus compilation of the Mairelon books and the new cover is beautiful (though I am a bit more partial to the older covers). The Mairelon books are 2 of my top books of all time. It had hit so many of my favorite genres and themes: young adult fiction, fantasy, romance (only a touch), a level-headed, tomboyish heroine, a Cinderella story, comedy of manners, and the Regency period. I have read them every year for the past 7 years and every year, my appreciation for the writing and the wit and humor infused in those pages increase.

I'm not good at summarizing plots, but here goes...

Kim, a London street urchin disguised as a boy, is hired to break into the wagon of Mairelon, a street magician who just so happens to be a real wizard. She is caught and then joins Mairelon and his faithful, but all-too-proper servant, Hunch on a journey through the English countryside to retrieve a magical platter. They become entangled with the 10 or so other people (this includes some Druids-who-aren't-really-Druids) who are also chasing after that platter.

That's only the "Mairelon the Magician" half of this volume. In the second half, "The Magician's Ward", Kim becomes Mairelon's ward and struggles to balance surviving the societal expectations of being a ward of a well-to-do family and dealing with the recent magical skullduggery that is going on in London.

Fans of Wrede and Stevermer's Regency story, "Sorcery and Cecilia", should definitely check this book out. It has the same wit, humor, and feel. Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer fans should also take a look. To get a better sense of this book, please check out the individual the store reviews of "Mairelon the Magician" and "The Magician's Ward". They are worded much better than my own review here. I also recommend looking at "A Matter of Magic" as two 200+ page books, as it was originally meant to be read, instead of trying to read both books as one long 400+ page book

This is two books in one: Mairelon the Magician and The Magician's Ward. Both chronicle the adventures of a street thief who hooks up with a magician in 19th century London.

The first book is awful. It might as well be called "Much Ado About Silverware." It starts off with a very promising premise of a street urchin named only "Kim" posing as a boy to stay safe as she pulls jobs in London, who breaks into a magician's wagon at the behest of a unknown "gentry cove" (a well-to-do gentleman). When she's caught, the magician (Mairelon, as I'm sure you've guessed) takes her into his employ as he searches for "The Saltash Set" -- a magical set of dishes (!!) that he's been accused of stealing. Prior to this, the only books of Wrede's I'd ever read were the four in her Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The fourth is boring but the first three are so clever and inventive that I had high hopes for this one. Her characters always engage in a lot of dialogue and explaining as the plot moves along, but here she carries that beyond the extreme. I lost count of the number of people in this book who stopped the action (such as it was) and demanded an explanation. Usually, one was given and instead of just writing "So and so explained" Wrede actually EXPLAINS THE PLOT AGAIN, as if you really weren't just reading it for yourself ten pages earlier. And the plot is just plain stupid. Magic dishes? Really? That's the best she could come up with? Even though someone is murdered in this story, the plot never moves past yawn-inducing once Mairelon and Kim leave London and go chasing the magic dishes in the British countryside. In fact, the murder is barely commented upon. No, everyone would prefer to keep explaining about the magic dishes. The magic the dishes actually do is incredibly boring too, so much so that I was at a loss to understand why everyone in the story wanted them so much. Wrede also makes the fatal mistake of introducing far too many characters and at various points in the story (especially the stupid, hideously written ending) they tumble into the "action" one on top of another with present characters exclaiming "Why, it's so-and so! What are you doing here?" And meanwhile you're not even clear who this character is, since they've only been mentioned once or twice, and they have no real personality beyond spouting British expressions, and their motivations in wanting the magic dishes are unclear until the end, when a roomful of people (I lost count of how many, but I think there might have been 20 people there at one point.) are taking it in turns to explain everything. By then, trust me, you will not care.

Despite all that, I read the second book because hey, it's right there two pages after the first one ends. Why not? I figured I'd give Wrede another shot. The main two characters were interesting enough in the beginning and at times in the middle that I hoped a better plot would showcase them more effectively. And how could it get much worse than haring off after magic platters and bowls?

Fortunately, it doesn't. The second book's plot revolves around what happens after Kim becomes reluctantly transformed into something of a society lady, complete with a coming out ball in her honor. There's a dash of romance and a better mystery than "Who really took the dishes?" There are also slightly higher stakes, though the climactic scene is just as heavy on characters demanding explanations and the bad guy "monologuing" all the answers as the first book is. Another thing they have in common is that we know from practically the first chapter who the bad guy is. So there's really not much mystery. I wish the plot hadn't been quite so simplistic, but at least it was vaguely interesting. That's faint praise, I know, but I can't do any better. I'm generous enough to give it three stars, but a single star for the first book drags the average for this double-helping down to a two. It's just a matter of time before I read another of Wrede's books, but thanks to this paltry offering, it will not be on my priority list. I believe she's capable of better, and I hope I prove myself right one day.

Though written for "young adults", these two books will reward all adults with some superb character-driven humor. They are also first-class YA fantasy adventures.

The first book introduces a large cast of deftly-drawn characters who end up in a hilarious multi-sided conflict at a "temple".

The plot of the second book is somewhat darker, but there are still plenty of laughs along the way.

Recommended for everyone.

Patricia C. Wrede as one of my favorite authors as a child, in part because her female characters were always intelligent, composed, evolved and behaved heroically in extreme situations. In fantasy, a genre saturated with burly, macho heroes, I appreciate a good, strong female lead character. You absolutely get that with the "A Matter of Magic" series. I think all the characters are incredibly well-developed, and the writing is funny, exciting and unexpected. Kim and Mairelon are fantastic examples of divergent thinkers with fringe social status participating in intrigue, solving mysteries and doing the right thing. What more could a young reader want?

Also, why hasn't this been made into a movies or a mini-series?

Interesting story, but I had no attachment to the characters, even after two books. There was no buildup to the conclusion in either book (there are two included here), so I was left wanting more because I still didn't know the characters at all. They were flat, one-dimensional, and boring at best. There was so much promise: a confident heroine; a strong sexy leader; and an interesting plot. But watch out, those endings seem to fly all together at once, even to the point of having everyone just randomly show up in a hunting lodge together, never you mind that they didn't know each other and circled in different echelons of society.

This book was disappointingly promising, but with no delivery. A completed, much longer, rewrite would be much appreciated.

Great story and writing. Written for all ages to enjoy. Magic, mystery, with a hint of romance...in a kind of My Fair Lady sort of way. Will try to get a hold of a paperback version to reread with hubby or kids.

I was really excited that Patricia was coming out with a new book, I'd try anything she writes but be aware this is a reprint of 2 of her earlier books, don't expect anything new if you've read Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward.

I really enjoy books by Patricia Wrede, but I will not buy this book, or any book by this publisher, because of their short-sighted pricing policies for the Kindle edition. I would definitely have bought this in the Kindle form, but now, I will not buy it at all in any form.

I have always believed in supporting writers I like by purchasing their books as soon as they come out. In this case, I am unable to do so, and I'm sorry about it. However, this kind of pricing is unacceptable.

I expect to read the book when it is available used, remaindered, from the library, or, possibly, I will read it while sitting in a bookstore. In any case, when there is no benefit to the publisher.

Publishers - we e-book readers are people who buy and read a lot of books - look at the store sales for evidence. Do you really think it's a good idea to alienate us?