Sorcery & Cecilia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot
by Patricia C. Wrede, Caroline Stevermer
Genres: FantasyPages: 326
Series: Cecilia & Kate #1
Rating:
Synopsis:A great deal is happening in London and the country this season.
For starters, there's the witch who tried to poison Kate at the Royal College of Wizards. There's also the man who seems to be spying on Cecelia. (Though he's not doing a very good job of it--so just what are his intentions?) And then there's Oliver. Ever since he was turned into a tree, he hasn't bothered to tell anyone where he is.
Clearly, magic is a deadly and dangerous business. And the girls might be in fear for their lives . . . if only they weren't having so much fun!
Sorcery & Cecilia is a fun epistolary novel that’s a little bit Austen-esque (or maybe Heyer-esque? hmm), but with magic added in. Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede co-wrote it through each creating a character and writing to each other about their adventures, without discussing the plot, each riffing off the details given by the other and adding to the ongoing plot.
Obviously it got tightened up and edited a bit before being published, and for the most part flows very smoothly. Despite being written by two different authors, the letters themselves are fairly uniform in tone and style, so it can be a little difficult to keep in mind the differences between the two girls at times. Because of the letter format, though, they’re always alternating, which helps.
It turns out to be a bit of a romance as well as a fantasy, as each of the girls makes new friends and allies; in both cases, they initially don’t exactly get along with the men, but it’s fairly obvious to the reader fairly quickly that they find them fascinating, and where it’s going to go, in a very classic sort of way.
It was a lot of fun to read and wraps up satisfyingly; I’m curious about the other two books, but not in a hurry to read them, since they were written with such a large gap between. Sorcery & Cecilia can definitely stand alone.
Rating: 4/5
