THE DISGRACED MAGE

A student at a magical school discovers a new form of magic as the institution is threatened by outside forces in Oey’s fantasy novel. 

Lina Arnoult, who hails from a prominent magical family, is excited to begin studying at the elite Taliesin Academy—but she is humiliated when the entry assessment of her magic rates her a 29 while the other students score in the 70s and 80s. She is stripped of her noble status, shunned by her teachers and other students, and her parents refuse to speak to her. While struggling to improve, Lina discovers alternative ways of performing magic that challenge the way the subject is usually taught. In her second year, she is determined to prove the school and her detractors wrong. Meanwhile, a group of non-magical commoners called Novus Vetus is attacking magical schools to challenge the superiority of magicians; Lina’s newfound skills may be more important than she realizes. Pacing issues bedevil this novel, mostly because it is trying to do too many things at once. Lina’s first difficult year at Taliesin is skipped over, thought it forms the basis for her motivations. The second half of the story focuses on the attacks by Novus Vetus and their political implications, despite the fact that the author has not developed the fictional world of the narrative much beyond Lina’s school. The magical system is an inventive one, but its role in the story is bogged down with overly wordy descriptions and exposition-heavy scenes discussing magical theory. (“Wordless magic is called ‘wordless’ because it isn’t spoken, but that is a misnomer. Words are technically used if only in thought to cast a spell internally.”) Lina discovers a new avenue of magic, but the conventional approach to the art isn’t sufficiently described to illustrate how her method is different, or why she is the only one who’s discovered it. (The magical action scenes work better than those describing its practice in dry, textbook language.) Still, Lina is a stubborn, strong-willed, and occasionally ruthless character who is nevertheless likable and fun to read about. 

This story is brimming with potential, but the various plot threads fail to coalesce.