*NEW RELEASE SPECIAL* Review of NETGALLEY arc An Inheritance of Magic – Book 1 of the Stephen Oakwood series by Benedict Jacka #BrainfluffNETGALLEYbookreview #AnInheritanceofMagicbookreview

I loved Jacka’s Alex Verus series – although it did get depressingly dark near the end. But what made it stand out from the rest was the interesting and layered way Jacka depicted someone who could see into the future. And the fact that Alex could only really be accurate for about thirty seconds in a fight, because branching possibilities after that meant the future timeline became so very entangled. It was so cool and plausible. See my reviews of Fated (Book 1), Veiled (Book 6), Burned (Book 7), Bound (Book 8), Fallen (Book 10), Forged (Book 11) and Risen (Book 12). So when I saw that An Inheritance of Magic, the start of a new series, was available – I jumped at the chance of reading it.

BLURB: The wealthy seem to exist in a different, glittering world from the rest of us. Almost as if by… magic.

Stephen Oakwood is a young man on the edge of this hidden world. He has talent and potential, but turning that potential into magical power takes money, opportunity, and training. All Stephen has is a minimum wage job and a cat.

But when a chance encounter with a member of House Ashford gets him noticed by the wrong people, Stephen is thrown in the deep end. For centuries, the vast corporations and aristocratic Houses of the magical world have grown impossibly rich and influential by hoarding their knowledge. To survive, Stephen will have to take his talent and build it up into something greater—for only then can he beat them at their own game.

REVIEW: It didn’t take me all that long to get through this one – not because it’s a particularly short book, at 384 pages, it isn’t. But because I simply couldn’t put it down. Right from the beginning, I was firmly on Stephen’s side. Jacka writes put-upon young heroes well, though Stephen is less hard-edged than Alex Verus. But then Stephen has been brought up by a loving father, whereas Alex spent his childhood in the clutches of a highly abusive, power-crazed mage.

Though Stephen has had a hard time of it. His father suddenly disappears when he is eighteen, leaving him destitute. He manages to get by bumping along the bottom of the economic ladder with a series of dead-end, poorly paid jobs, while still studying drucraft – the form of magic that is used in the urban fantasy backdrop, set in contemporary England. As Stephen gets caught up with the Ashfords, a great deal of the story is taken up by his desperate attempts to garner more magical power and skill, without having any lessons. His innate magical ability isn’t particularly strong – but he has talents that give him options to manufacture some defences – he hopes.

Because he’s all too well aware that his first encounter with House Ashford won’t be the last – and he’s determined to get to a point where he can begin to fight back. This is truly a David and Goliath struggle – and I love the fact that Stephen doesn’t go looking for trouble, but does his very best to hunker down and keep himself safe. Because it tends to fray my sympathy when our clearly underpowered, untutored protagonist decides to plunge headlong into a confrontation s/he can’t possibly win – which happens far too often for the sake of the plot in SFF.

In addition to having a really strong, sympathetic protagonist narrating his story in first person, what also sets this book apart is the highly detailed and complex magical system. Again, Jacka has been clever in how he delivers all the information regarding the magic to his readers. We care about it, because Stephen spends his time trying to build some magical defences for the next time a certain van with tinted windows draws up in his street.

I couldn’t put it down. Though I give due warning – Jacka leaves this one with a doozy of a cliff-hanger (think of Novik’s ending of A Deadly Education) so I’m desperate for the next book in the series. And I’ve come away with something of a book hangover. All in all, this is one of the reads of the year for me and comes very highly recommended for urban fantasy fans. Or any kind of fantasy, really – give it a whirl. While I obtained an arc of An Inheritance of Magic from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
10/10