Jerry Cooke
4.75⭐️ - Perfectly applied humour and fantastic characters in this chaotic story of magic and trauma!
Clare Bishop is the best name in magic on the Las Vegas strip - a fact made possible by the almost unlimited powers of a future Zaro, a leader of the world's witches. Power that nobody suspects she possesses, because everyone knows there can only be one future Zaro at a time and that's Ozarik. The universe doesn't particularly care what anyone thinks though.
When Ozarik experiences a spiral of panic that leads him to cast a spell that stops all death on earth in the name of protecting Clare, she must (reluctantly) take hold of the power and try to fix what her oldest friend has broken.
This was such an unexpected joy - Thorne brings the perfect Pratchett style wry humour forth to balance the dark trauma the characters experiences and it makes for such a fascinating and well written story. The setting makes for such a great way to expose the question of how a human would deal with almost godlike power and Ozarik and Clare's parallel experiences show how different two people can be based on their life stories. There's something so satisfying about seeing magic like this used and I particularly loved how Thorne describes the interaction of that power and the physical world - the semi-sentience of objects is so very much in that Pratchett tradition and it's so fun.
An utter joy and such a powerful story, so very worth reading!
4.75⭐️ - Perfectly applied humour and fantastic characters in this chaotic story of magic and trauma!
Clare Bishop is the best name in magic on the Las Vegas strip - a fact made possible by the almost unlimited powers of a future Zaro, a leader of the world's witches. Power that nobody suspects she possesses, because everyone knows there can only be one future Zaro at a time and that's Ozarik. The universe doesn't particularly care what anyone thinks though.
When Ozarik experiences a spiral of panic that leads him to cast a spell that stops all death on earth in the name of protecting Clare, she must (reluctantly) take hold of the power and try to fix what her oldest friend has broken.
This was such an unexpected joy - Thorne brings the perfect Pratchett style wry humour forth to balance the dark trauma the characters experiences and it makes for such a fascinating and well written story. The setting makes for such a great way to expose the question of how a human would deal with almost godlike power and Ozarik and Clare's parallel experiences show how different two people can be based on their life stories. There's something so satisfying about seeing magic like this used and I particularly loved how Thorne describes the interaction of that power and the physical world - the semi-sentience of objects is so very much in that Pratchett tradition and it's so fun.
An utter joy and such a powerful story, so very worth reading!