The Mislaid Magician: Or Ten Years After (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
1.5 stars. This third installment in the Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot series follows Cecelia and Kate 10 years after The Grand Tour. There's a mystery involving railroads and ancient magic, and James and Cecelia have gone to investigate. Unsurprisingly, Thomas and Kate find themselves embroiled in the same web of intrigue. And there are also (somewhat blandly) mischievous children.This book just didn't work for me. I found it profoundly boring and wanted to quit reading at several points. I think my key complaints can be boiled down to the following:1. The letter writing format is really just worn out by this point. It's confusing, slow, and really just sucks the life out of the tale. Having James and Thomas write letters as well is redundant and clutters the plot; it also doesn't add much to the male characters who don't seem to progress much beyond the sketches that we heard of them from Cecy and Kate in the past. A lot of the charm of the first book was that Kate and Cecelia were close and we got to know them through these letters. Thomas and James's letters don't tell us much about their relationship and often just serve to portray them as rather chauvinistic in their attitudes towards their wives, inlaws, etc. I found myself actually disliking Thomas in this novel--the qualities that were charming in the first book just make him seem like a jerk in this one.2. Kate is just utterly useless at this point. I think Cecy sums it up very well when she writes to Kate, "And of course you can only do three spells reliably. You have never cared for magic, only for what it can do, and there are only three things that you truly want to do, which can only be done by magic: find Thomas or the children, call Thomas, and keep your hair from falling down.” So true and so disappointing. I actually liked her better than Cecy in the first novel and wondered if she wasn't the star of the show. At the end of The Grand Tour, I thought that she was finally going to start embracing her own magic ability and would maybe end up becoming something more akin to Thomas's magical equal. But at this point, she has turned into a conventional female character of the period and generally shed most of the traits that initially made her appealing. Also, as mentioned above, it seems like Thomas is a jerk and treats her somewhat pompously, which speaks rather poorly of her for tolerating it.3. The plot is just needlessly complicated, which is bad since you don't care enough about any of the characters or stakes involved to be bothered to follow it closely. I honestly didn't care about most of the storylines in this book. It's like the authors are trying to write something in the vein of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, but they really don't succeed in engaging the reader enough to make all of the detail work in their favor.All in all, I would not recommend this book--or rather, I'd recommend it to only the most die-hard fans of the first two. Not suitable for those who haven't read previous books.
This book probably deserved a little more of a better rating than I gave it, but since most of the amusement was once again near the end, I might as well keep it like this.The whole fast-forward of ten years later was kind of bittersweet for me; for one, I liked the journey they took getting to where they are now, yet the whole contrast of Cecy and James doing the grunt work versus Kate and Thomas with all the babysitting was refreshing at the same time. Still, I did miss the young couples when they were still discovering their partialities to each other in Sorcery and Cecelia, and their newly-wedded adventures in The Grand Tour. I admit it was hard getting through when the only romance I expected from Mislaid Magician came from a couple I didn't even care about, not even from the first mention of Georgy in the first book.I did, however, love the freshly-added voices in James and Thomas. Cecy was usually my favorite when it came to humorous quips, but it was always Kate's letters in the first two books that endeared me, solely because of what Thomas says to people (and mostly Kate, of course). So I was very glad that I could also read the exchange of letters the Marquis of Schofield and his best friend sent out along the adventure. I expected James to be the less formal one; I'm glad I was wrong in that respect.The last bits in the book do make me curious, so even if Mislaid Magician was not as fantabulous as The Grand Tour (though nothing trumps Sorcery and Cecelia), I might read a future book if it's in the making!
What do You think about The Mislaid Magician: Or Ten Years After (2006)?
I only somewhat liked Sorcery and Cecilia, and I did not like The Grand Tour. So why did I put myself through reading the third installment of Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevemer’s trilogy? Clearly, I am insane.Like Sorcery, The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After is written in epistolary form. Cousins Cecilia and Kate correspond with each other (along with occasional, inane missives from their husbands).I was initially intrigued by Wrede and Stevemer’s writing experiment. The authors exchange chapters without knowing what the other will write. However, in Mislaid, it is clear they have no idea where the plot is going or if they want to have a plot at all. Instead, the book absolutely plods and meanders.This lack of purpose is obvious as the cousins write about their children. They mention what they ate. They include long descriptions of trains. Real life is boring. I read fiction to escape the inanities of life—not to suffer through them.The book’s plot and pace doesn’t pick up until well past 200 pages. By this time, though, I had little interest in what would happen.Unfortunately, the book—which could have been interesting (I mean, it has magic and Regency England for goodness sakes)—is tedious to the end.The dénouement is actually the biggest offender of all. A few short pages explain away everything that happens in the 300 previous. It is like Hercule Poirot revealing the details of the crime—minus the charismatic Poirot and Agatha Christie’s writing ability.The best I can say about this book is that it is over. And there isn’t a fourth in the series.
—Leanna
This should really be retitled Being the Private Correspondence of Two Families... Which Explains Why It Would Only Be Of Interest to These Two Families. Come on, book, everyone knows the Tolstoy rule of happy families: "All happy families are alike." Which is why one could not be interested in the slightest in reading hundreds and hundreds of pages about them- especially when the excuse of a plot couldn't be more lame, or less suspenseful. Oh, please, do not get me started on the characters- or rather, lack thereof.I will safely say this, authors: Jane Austen is not proud of you. She awards you no points, and may God have mercy on your fangirlishness that ended in giving the words "In the style of Jane Austen" on the back cover a bad name. If little girls read this first and turn away from Jane in consequence, that's on you people!(PS, Spoiler- (view spoiler)[The mute little girl they rescue from possible gypsies turns out to be Queen Victoria as a child. Yes, for real. (hide spoiler)]
—Kelly
The cousins are separated to solve this mystery of the missing magician. Cecy and her husband, James, play the larger role in the mystery and politics. Kate has ended up taking care of all the children while Thomas tries to escape the domestic uproar. I like the format with the women writing to each other along with their husbands' pragmatic letters. Cecy continues to be spirited and Kate learns her powers are more extensive than she expected. I almost hate to tell you this, but...To read the full review go to www.talesuntangled.wordpress.com
—Tales Untangled
