Himself has added this to our towering TBR and given I have a real weakness for school-based adventures, I snagged this one for a recent train journey.
Caitlyn Aguirre should have been a magician. Her family certainly expected her to be a magician. But by 
the time she reached her twelfth birthday, Caitlyn hadn’t even managed to cast a single spell! In desperation, her parents send her – and her magical sisters – to Jude’s Sorcerous Academy, her last best chance to discover her powers. But as she struggles to survive her classes without a single spell to her name, Caitlyn starts to uncover an ancient mystery that may prove the key to her true powers. If she lives long enough to find it.
Caitlyn is an endearing protagonist. She comes from a magical talented family and is one of triplets. In magical circles, this is regarded as a boon because twins and triplets often have complimentary powers, making them an especially powerful unit – a necessary advantage if the Aguirre family are to keep their position as one of the leading magical families. But while both sisters are extremely gifted, Caitlyn cannot summon a single thing. Not that her parents are prepared to give up and accept the situation. Magic is part of everyday life. Everyone has some sort of magical ability – even the servants and lower orders use magic in their everyday lives. Except Caitlyn.
It means she is at the mercy of her sisters’ pranks and while her parents occasionally step in to prevent her being killed, from the time she is seven, Caitlyn is routinely turned into frogs, dogs and mice, hexed so she behaves in stupid ways, magically frozen, stuck to the floor and even blinded… Of course, it all eventually wears off. But she, with her zero ability, has nothing to fight back with.
Her only recourse is to study as hard as she can, in the hope that eventually, she will grow into her magic, as her father keeps promising. But by the time she is twelve, she has all but given up. Which is when she receives the worst news of all. She will be accompanying her sisters to the magical academy, St Jude’s. She is half convinced that she won’t survive the first term – because students are mostly supervised by older prefects, who are desperately studying for their magical finals. So it’s left to the juniors to sort themselves out – it’s no good Caitlyn running to sharp-tongued Sandy for help when one of the girls in her dorm targets her.
I loved the dynamic – it was all too plausible that this would go on in a magical establishment. I also liked the fact that Caitlyn’s only friend is a peasant girl on a scholarship who is naturally extremely magically giftedbut with no grounding in theory or how to mix with the higher orders. Nuttall’s magical system is also interestingly complex and the rules are well covered within the story as Caitlyn struggles through some magical lessons and manages to cope better in others by virtue of her constant studying.
Her plight is both believable and engrossing, so that I gobbled up this book in two sittings. I’m delighted to see there are other books in this series, which I’ll definitely be tracking down. Recommended for fans of magical school stories.
9/10
One day, strange things start cropping up in her photos. Things that don’t look human. Impossible things. Monstrosities. Beth thinks her hateful sister-in-law, Justine, has tampered with her pictures to play a cruel joke, but rather than admitting or denying it, Justine up and vanishes, leaving the family in disarray. Beth’s search for Justine plunges her into a world she never knew existed, one filled with ancient and terrifying creatures…
A kidnap attempt outside the school gates in broad daylight convinces Gabriel Ash that his renegade wife is trying to steal their sons from him. Only the intervention of his friend Constable Hazel Best kept them safe. It’s a simple if alarming explanation, but is it the truth? Hazel uncovers disturbing information about another crime, the repercussions of which are still threatening innocent lives seventeen years later. Once again Hazel finds herself at loggerheads with her superiors. Did they really conspire to protect a murderer? And this time she isn’t getting the support she needs from Ash. She’d thought they were kindred spirits: now she’s not sure what his motives are.
Jacob Wesson is a timecop from 2040, sent back to WWII London to stop the assassination of Britain’s war leader. The assignment plays out with apparent ease, but the jump home goes wrong, leading to a series of events that not only puts in jeopardy the outcome of WWII, but all history…
This edition was produced by Kingfisher in April 1994. I love the Medusan head glaring out at us, but that ugly blue textbox really spoils the whole effect – particularly as the font is so very boringly ordinary. It is entirely in the wrong place, blocking out too much of the cover design.
Published in November 2003 by Kingfisher, we still have the threatening glare by an angry female, but this time she is an Eastern princess. I love the box opening and all the creatures escaping. The title running up the side of the cover works well and allows the attractive design to be properly seen.
This hardback edition, published by Kingfisher in September 1985 demonstrates just what a difference a textbox can make. This version of the first cover is far more effective as we now can see those amazing snakes writhing around. I also prefer the green colour of the textbox as it merges with the overall design, rather than clashing with it – though given the choice I’d do without it altogether.
This edition, produced by Kingfisher in July 2007 has nailed it. Who doesn’t love a dragon – and what a dragon! The vibrant orange hues are glorious, snagging attention and begging for me to pick this one up. The artwork is beautifully detailed without any textbox AND the font has been bevelled and shaded to give an attractive 3-D effect. This is my favourite.
This edition is something of a mystery. Unusually, it appears on Goodreads with no other publication details alongside it, though it does look rather amateurish. The dark background doesn’t work with the deep blue font, to the extent that the author’s name is nearly invisible. That’s a shame, because the shading across the title works quite well. Which is more than can be said for the various creatures floating around the page, as they look like they’ve been selected from clipart and simply plonked there without any overarching design to pull them together. Which of these covers is your favourite?
Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims. Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them…
1986: Rebecca Essig leaves a slumber party early but comes home to a massacre—committed by her own parents. Only one of her siblings has survived. But as the tragic event unfolds, she begins to realize that other than a small army of six-year-olds, she is among very few survivors of a nationwide slaughter.
The city of Tevanne runs on scrivings, industrialised magical inscriptions that make inanimate objects sentient; they power everything, from walls to wheels to weapons. Scrivings have brought enormous progress and enormous wealth – but only to the four merchant Houses who control them. Everyone else is a servant or slave, or they eke a precarious living in the hellhole called the Commons.
One hand of cards and it’s all over but the crying… Cass Kennedy finally gets what she’s been dreaming of for the past ten years: a drifter ship to call her own. All the sim time and battle training is going to pay off in spades as she sets her course for the future. She’ll be living on her own terms, not those of her father. But drifting through deep space with a crew of nutty strangers on the DS Anarchy carries a lot more surprises than she bargained for. Nobody told her that her ship is falling apart, that dead chickens are something you really want to hang on to, and that the OSG has big plans for the universe that don’t necessarily jibe with her plans for herself.
Brainfluff 