REVIEW: An Inheritance of Magic (Inheritance of Magic #1) by Benedict Jacka
The super-rich control everything—including magic—in this thrilling and brilliant, contemporary fantasy from the author of the Alex Verus novels.
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.
I GOT THIS BOOK FROM THE LIBRARY
TW ANIMAL ABUSE WITH RESULTS GRAPHICALLY DESCRIBED ON PAGE
SPOILERS
Review:
Dear Benedict Jacka,
Your book was a buddy read this month in the reading group I belong to. I liked some things in it, but overall found it a frustrating read. This is an alternate world which resembles ours but with addition of magic which is called “drucraft”. If I understood correctly the gist of this magic system is manipulating the “essentia” which sounded like magical force. Essentia can be found in many places but not the same quantity. There are also several varieties of essentia which can help you built sigls (yes, if you like me read a lot of fantasy these thingies seem to operate like *sigils*). There are wells which are the places where you can get essentia for yourself if you have the skills. There are many rules surrounding the wells – who owns them, how to discover and use them.
I tried to summarize the rules of magic as I understood from this book. Hopefully I understood it correctly. There are many more rules and I am guessing not all of them have been communicated to the reader yet. The world building was quite interesting.
I ended up being unclear on how much the general public knows about the existence of magic in their world. It is something that easily opened to the rich and powerful for their use, but for the rest of the population I was not sure how much they know of it.
The main character is a twenty year old who had been practicing drucraft since his dad started teaching him and at the same time he cannot devote much time to it simply speaking because he needs to work and pay rent. It was refreshing to have a main character for whom lack of money is a real and constant problem and that lack of money is the main reason why he cannot really advance in the world of magic which is basically the world of rich and powerful.
Schools that teach magic cost a lot of money, sigls cost a lot of money, etc etc. And Stephen does not have a lot of money in the bank
“My bank balance felt like an invisible number hovering over my head, ticking steadily down and pushing me to keep searching, hoping for a break. But luck wasn’t with me, and while I found a few Wells, all were either locked away and inaccessible or empty. Every night I came home empty-handed, while every day the number in my bank account shrank a little more”
And then Stephen (as the blurb tells you) encounters the psychotic member of House Ashford who thinks that it is ok to kidnap him, threaten him and when it does not work horrifically abuse his cat. Basically to beat such cat half to death.
Listen, I can figure out why beating the cat half to death was necessary to the story. The author seemingly decided that trying to save his cat (as he does) would give Stephen all the motivations he needed to get better in his craft and in fact he does both. You know what though? I am not trying to change the story on the page, but I am unhappy with the choice being made there. As a book friend said injuring animals or women to help the main character find motivation, well is not my cup of tea.
Actually it appears that Stephen is a very gifted magic user who just needs someone to teach him the craft now when he is basically alone in the world. He is not as alone in the world as he thinks as he seems to have friends who care about him, but he has no adult authority figures left who can help him (as far as he knows anyway)
There is a priest who does provide some help, but his condition is (when Stephen comes to him with questions) is to make him read theology books. I get the idea is to improve his education level and make him able to talk to people who are more used to communicating on such topics with each other than Stephen did, but honestly mostly I wanted to slap the priest.
In fact I disliked *everyone* in this book, except main the character and his friend Colin. Oh, he does make some pretty idiotic choices and by far is not perfect, but I understood the reasons for his choices at least. The rest? Mostly selfish, entitled assholes if you ask me and this is the main reason for my frustrations.
Usually in fantasy books like this where the main character ends up stronger and overall better as a person, you can feel satisfaction about his place in society and in his personal life (if he does not die of course but even than his hero quest makes him a better person). Here the world he is trying to get into is just so horrible that I am just shrugging about him getting the entry card in.
As an aside what is up with *all* the women in this book so far?
Grade: C/C-
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Thank you for this review and the warning. I would have looked at that cover with the cat, front and center, and been tempted to check it out. But nope, I don’t want what you mentioned in my head.
@Jayne: I totally hear you.