Spellwright by Blake Charleton

The old adage states: "Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. This might be true in our world, but if you find yourself in Blake Charleton's Spellwright, you are in for a big surprise. Here words are Magic. Literally. 

A first book by a new author, Spellwright is very thought provoking. This isn't entertainment that you're going to pick up and finish right away, just because the system of magic shown here is unique and complex. In a genre where magic is usually a key element, and the basic underlying for those systems is similar (only the names have changed to protect the innocent), this feels like a very fresh take on magic. I liked it, though I do have to say it was very complex to understand. And that's not a bad thing either. Though provoking may not be the words typically used to describe works in the genre of fantasy; instead this is an escapist genre (many may argue, and there are a lot of social issues address in fantasy though usually not on the surface). Still, it is nice to find something challenging, that engages the mind not just in what's happening in the story, but in having to understand the world and its characters.

Our hero, Nicodemus Weal, is a young magician with a problem. Magic is a written language and there are those that can use magic, but misspell - dyslexic spellcasters - known in this world as cacographers. Nicodemus is a cacographer. He is an apprecitce to an old blind wizard, and tucked away by the magical academy he attends with others like him in a building called the Drum Tower. Just by touching the magical words he can ruin spells, literally misspelling them. It's a hard life, as an apprentice, never knowing if he'll be able to fulfill a prophecy that he and some others think he might have been born for. Murder, demons, druids, prohecies, counter-prophecies and wizards - this book really has it all, and it's manged pretty well.

This was a slow read for me in good and bad ways. There are parts that are hard to read through, and wrapping your head around the magic system does take some time. But there are very good parts that are action packed. The mystery aspects, investigating a murder, while important could have used better pacing, and there are some things that seem to not be well foreshadowed and are TOO much of a surprise to the reader. (Not that I want to be able to figure things out, but usually when something I was expecting happens, I can look back and go, "OH!" But there are a few things where you just don't get that that moment of clarity like you should, and that's a disappointment to me, because it means the surprise was too forced.)

I must say, there was a point in this book where I would have given almost anything for the main character to make a different choice. And I honestly feel the way the book was written, the hero making that choice would have been justified in that choice. It would be very interesting to read a much different story where he did make that choice. The ending of this book is actually pretty slow for me. I think he could have been cut off much earlier, and still the reader not miss anything of grave importance that couldn't be quickly covered in the opening of the second book.

Still, I am interested in picking up the sequels to this novel, though they might not be on my "MUST READ RIGHT NOW" list, they will certainly fall into my TBR pile, and I'm looking forward to that.