Magyk (Septimus Heap, Book One)

If you are going to write a book that is over 500 pages long, that is the first of a trilogy, that is about witches and wizards, and that owes a lot, in tone and content, to Rowling and Pratchett – and it’s your first published novel – then you need more than audacity to carry it off. Thankfully, Sage’s story also has the conviction, invention and good humour to create excitement at every turn. Looking at it with my critical hat on, there’s not much that’s new in the shape of the tale or the cast of characters. Wicked wizards, good witches, apprentice magicians, ghosts, creatures from myth and folktale, and animals carrying messages (rats not owls), are engaged in a struggle of good and evil that takes them into various forms of danger and mystery. Characters are sketched in, and there’s little attempt to give substance to the fantasy world they inhabit; but there’s plenty that’s new and memorable in the particulars. Those that appealed to me best were the escape down a disgusting rubbish chute, the tiny vicious shield bugs kept in jars of green goo, and the monstrous viscous maggots who eventually ate the shield bugs. Actually, events and personalities pile in at such a rate and run off in so many directions that it is only with some difficulty that most of the loose ends are tied up at the end. Even then, the author spends a chapter catching up with what has happened to those of her creations who got lost along the way. Yes, that’s an indication of carelessness in construction in a book this long but it’s also a sign of Sage’s irrepressible enjoyment in the tale and its inhabitants: a storytelling gift that quite knocks your critical hat off.