320 pages
Published 1988
Read from March 2 to March 8
Rating: 3 out of 5
My reading habits have wilted into nothing. Good thing I’d already decided I wouldn’t try for record book numbers this year. It’s hard enough just surviving day to day with the fashy bullshit coming at us faster than we could possibly process it.
This is an airy morsel of an epistolic novel set in 1817. Two young ladies — Kate on her London debut, her cousin Cecy envious and stuck in rural Essex — correspond about their adventures at balls and picnics, and their brushes with the affairs of English wizards (as well as a certain Mysterious Marquis).
Sorcery is calculated to appeal to anyone who grew up reading Austen or the Brontë sisters. The characters are likable, and the prose seems like a good match for the period, at least to this non-expert. The way magic is lightly sprinkled over a historical fiction setting is reminiscent of Stevermer’s later A College of Magics. I found the overall effect charming but not compelling (though that likely derives from the general anhedonia of having to survive another Trump era).
