Mairelon the Magician

by Patricia C. Wrede

By this point in my life I’ve read 4 books by Patricia Wrede. For a while I was thinking to myself, Wow, I really like Patricia Wrede’s books, but then I realized that I’ve actually only liked 2 of them. Which is half. Which really isn’t a great record.

Even worse, Mairelon the Magician was by far the most disappointing. I thought the characters were poorly developed and I really couldn’t have cared less about Kit, the book’s protagonist. She was much too stereotypical and the title character had so little background that when his brother suddenly showed up at the end and they had a touching reunion scene I was flipping back trying to figure out why this should matter. Certain passages were wonderfully well-written, which I think makes it all the more disappointing that the story kind of sucked.

Sorry.