Wherein we meet Ceony, a young Apprentice Magician who is forced into paper magic out of necessity. There are too few Paper Magicians, or Folders, in the country, and from time to time a student has the medium forced upon them to keep it from dying out.

Emery Thane is introduced as Ceony's teacher. An odd man, whose talent for folding is astounding. It doesn't take long for Ceony to develop a grudging like for her strange teacher, and the medium of folding.

Shenanigans ensue when someone from Thane's past attacks him in his home and it's up to Ceony and per paper puppy companion Fennel to save the day.

This book was lovely. The story was original and kept my interested the whole way through. The characters were likable. Fennel was my favorite and must be protected at all costs. I love the fact that though it's the first in a series, this book had a clear ending and was not a cliffhanger. A fun read and the audiobook was wonderful. The narrator did a wonderful job with the voices and her telling of the story kept me attentive.

Magic origami.  That would be cool talent to learn.   If you lived somewhere dry or only did magic outside in the middle of summer.  

I wonder how he kept his paper garden from constantly dissolving.

SPOILER ALERT
I don't normally reveal plot elements but I can't review this book without sharing some of the early events.

"The Paper Magician" takes place in an alternative Edwardian England in which Magicians, people bonded to a particular man-made material, are able to work magic with it, producing bullets that don't miss or animating paper birds so they can fly, are part of the establishment.

At the start, the story seemed to be a pleasant but conventional tale of the first days of a talented young woman's apprenticeship to a Magician bonded with paper.

I settled down to see how Ceony, our hard-working and talented young apprentice would prove herself to her endearingly eccentric Magician. The tone was light. Ceony was an earnest young woman with a troubled past, a strong spirit and an innocently optimistic view of the world. The magic Ceony was taught to achieve by folding paper was original and imaginative. The Magician was kind-hearted, a little distracted, remarkably unsexist for a man of his generation and clearly had secrets. So far so good.

Then, suddenly the story changed both in tone and in structure and took me to somewhere quite unexpected. Ceony's magician is attacked at home, in front of Ceony and has his heart ripped out and taken away by an evil magician.

The violence of this was quite unexpected and very effective. From that point on the level of violence increases as Ceony struggles to retrieve her magician's heart.

In a further surprise, Ceony's struggle turns out to be a very unconventional one, involving very high concept magic that is well thought through and woven into a clever plot structure that combines the physical rescue of the magician's heart, a review of key moments from his life and from Ceony's and dramatic, very physical conflicts between Ceony and the evil magician who stole the heart.

This was a pleasing adventure that has a lot more to it than action but never got bogged down either in the mechanics of the plot or in existential angst. It was more violent than I expected and the magic was startlingly original but it remained an adventure in which the good can triumph if only they try hard enough.

"The Paper Magician" is the first book in a series. I'm interested in reading the rest of the series but I know I have to be in a particular frame of mind to get the most out of this kind of read so I will save it up for the next time that I need an escape into a simpler world where we all know who the bad guys are and we can cheer for the bravery of the good guys.

The tone is light and the characterisation is very YA but the ideas are startlingly original. The magic is very high concept and the plot has just stepped from fairly normal to surprising  and slightly challenging.

I was having a bit of a Black Dog day today so needed something cheery to read.

I set aside my well-written book about, Emily, an artificial consciousness, because it's set at the end of the world and it's hard to be cheery in those circumstances and picked up "The PAper Magician".

That did the trick.

It's a little more YA than I'd expected but I can cope with that if it offers an adventure where our heroine overcomes adversity by discovering her inner strength and working well with others, which is where this seems to be going.

So far its completely free of existential panic or quiet despair.

It reminds me that Carly Simon song that went:

"I remember a time when fear could be named

and courage meant not refusing dares"

Just what I needed.