A SCHOLAR OF MAGICS

Sequel to Stevermer’s A College of Magics (1994), a tale set in an alternate Edwardian world where, unobtrusively, magic works.

Samuel Lambert, late of Wyoming and Kiowa Bob's Wild West Show, has been invited to magical Glasscastle University in England to assist with the mysterious Agincourt Project. Lambert, an expert marksman, can hit anything: targets with bullets, flying beetles with sugar cubes, you name it. He shares rooms with the elusive Nicholas Fell, Fellow of Holythorn College and considers himself prepared for anything—snobbery, boiled dinners, afternoon tea—until he meets Jane Brailsford, sister of Robert, one of the Project's sponsors. Jane teaches mathematics at equally magical Greenlaw College in Normandy. With Fell unaccountably absent, Lambert and Jane spot an intruder in Fell's study—a person apparently invisible to everyone else. Then Robert disappears, seemingly headed for the stately home of Lord Bridgewater, scion of an aristocratic and magical family. Fell reappears; he'd been researching in London—with Bridgewater (aha!). Jane's magical friend Faris avers that Fell is the warden of the west, an entity of great magical power, but is refusing to take up his duties. Lambert and Jane attempt to persuade him, but he vanishes, this time for good. Jane magically ensnares the intruder, but he reveals nothing. What's going on? Well, all these matters are connected; unfortunately, the plot lurches and staggers before fizzling out in courtroom-style explanations.

Samuel and Jane's burgeoning romance, impossibly decorous by modern standards, provides some diversion, but overall it's more misdirection than substance: Fun in places.