Spellbreaker

Spellbreaker was a great read. The magic system built within the world is fascinating, yhat established two different types of magic users. There are the Spellmakers, who can cast spells from different fields of magic and are psychically limited in how much they can learn in their life time. Finally there are the Spellbreakers who can see the spells that jave been cast and unweave them to “break” the spell.

The story itself was an entertaining mystery as Elsie Camden and Bacchus Kelsey stumble upon a dangerous plot to murder high level spellbreakers and steal their spells.

This had a slow start for me. Right around the halfway point, the mystery plot picked up and the momentum increased until the ending slammed into place. Since this is a duology, the ending is a cliffhanger with more questions than I've seen in a long time for a narrative. I'm glad I kept with it, I'm interested to see how this turns out. I appreciated the slow burn for Elsie and Bacchus... We don't get a resolution until the second book. If nothing else I'm going to read the second book just to root for a interracial romance!

I did notice a funny quirk in a few descriptions... It only happens a couple times but it was enough for me to notice a pattern that Holmberg (or maybe just Elsie) likes to describe things like stomachs and skeletons as “slapping the ground” or “melting into a puddle” to help explain Elsie's dread. I don't know why this pulled me out of the story, but it did, briefly, to make me chuckle at how odd it seemed before moving on.