At Christmas, I signed up for the Rainbow Crate book box. The first box contained A Marvellous Light, by Freya Marske.
Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it–not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles–and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
I enjoyed the heck out of this. I mostly just loved the main characters. But the world and magic system were interesting, the humor dry, the romance slow to build, and the writing so easy to read. The mystery wasn’t overly complex, but neither was it painfully obvious. And I did think it dragged a little in the middle; not in a boring way, just in a more of a middle than expect way. But, all in all, I’ll be on the edge of my seat waiting for more of this series.
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