The Magician’s Daughter

I wasn't sure about this one at the beginning, but I ended up enjoying it.

Biddy has grown up on the island of Hy-Brasil. She lives there with her found family Rowan and his familiar Hutchincroft. Rowan is a mage with little magic. That's because almost all the magic has gone out of the world. But together, maybe they can bring it back.

I loved the found family element and the setting. The characters too. I loved the mage/familiar relationship as well. Loving, but also funny at times.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an e-arc.

THANK GOD IT'S OVER!!!

It was like chewing a piece of food, and it can't be swallowed, it just grows and grows and grows... but... just 200 pages. It won't take long. Just 100 pages. Just 15 pages... it's over, soon. Just one more word, and another, and... WON'T THIS CRAP EVER END!!!!

Ok, so you probably understand I don't like it much. Though I like the story. There were some nice bits in it. I liked the Puca bit and the solution to the thing.

But I didn't like Biddy at all. Well, I liked her in the beginning, but somewhere at 100 pages she became your typical teenage heroine and I hate those. Sorry, all the typical teenage heroines out there, it's probably me being autistic and never having been a typical teenager, but whatever it is, I hate you.

I didn't find her reactions to things to be believable. I think she is hypocritical. She accuses everyone else of lying to her but lies herself without thinking twice about it. She believes her 100+ years old “daddy” can't take care of himself, but needs her, a 16 years old girl who has never done much to take care of the “daddy” to that day - it was always “daddy”s familiar who did all the work there. She was just reading books and running around the island. And what's with the Japan love? Had it been explained somehow it would have been interesting spice to the book, but we are just thrown the snippet that Tokyo was the city she most wanted to visit, and a word, komorebi.

“At this time of year, the path was like a dark green cathedral, dappled with sun, and Biddy told the other two about the words the Japanese had for different kinds of light: Light through leaves was called komorebi.”

“Flickers first, like sunlight glimpsed through leaves, the light the Japanese called komorebi.”