Magyk - Angie Sage [Review]

Title: Magyk (Septimus Heap #1)

Author: Angie Sage

Genre: Fantasy, fiction, children.

Date published: March 1st, 2005

Price: $7.99 at Barnes & Noble

Buy: Amazon

Edition I read: Septimus (Spanish Edition)

Publisher: Montena

Translator: Teresa Campodrón

Year of publishing: 2006

Pages: 489

Rating:

★★★✩✩

Magyk is the first book in the Septimus Heap series written by Angie Sage. This book’s genre is fantasy and children fiction, its more focused toward children than young adults.

Sarah and Silas Heap.

      The seventh son of a seventh son is a person with extraordinary magical powers, in the Heap family a seventh son is born and is named Septimus, but the baby dies and the midwife goes away with the body. After that, Silas Heap finds a baby girl in the snow and he and his wife decide to adopt her to compensate their loss. Nine years go by, and they live their normal lives until the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand, appears and tells them their adoptive daughter is the princess and an assassin is trying to find her to kill her…. that is where all the adventures begin.

      When I bought this book, what caught my attention was the description and cover design, and at the end of the story it makes sense.  I’m a passionate fantasy reader, so I had high expectations with this one; sadly I didn’t like it as much as I thought I would.

     

     

ExtraOrdinary Wizard,
Marcia Overstrand.

 The beginning is slow paced and kind of boring, but I understand it because we get to know the main characters and their stories, but there is a moment when they are being chased and must escape, I was expecting more action but the only thing I found was long and detailed descriptions that made the book slow paced all the time, even in the action sequences.

      I must admit I never understood how their magic worked; their spells seemed like too much trouble with a slow process. Other magic related stuff the book contains is magical creatures, like boggarts, and humanized animals, like the messenger rat.

      I didn’t like the characters at all, to me the Heap kids, Jenna and Nicko, and the Boy 412 lacked personality and charisma. Marcia and Silas were more interesting characters with their friendship-hate relationship.  The villain is a powerful necromancer named DomDaniel, he was once an ExtraOrdinary Wizard and wants to defeat Marcia. He is helped by his apprentice, a boy who is the same age as Boy 412. None of those two left a big impression on me.

Jenna Heap.

      I was expecting an epic battle between Marcia and DomDaniel, but that battle never happened…

or at least it wasn’t as exciting as I thought It would be, mainly because of the long and detailed descriptions, it was kind of disappointing. A good point in favor of the detailed descriptions is that it lets you imagine clearly all the places they visit, as well as their outfits and the creatures they talk about.

Septimus Heap.

      This book is simple, it has big premise but is not as good as it sounds. The plot is predictable and is hard to get hooked during the first half of the book, even though there is this big mystery about who is Septimus, Boy 412 or Domdaniel’s apprentice. sometimes the book makes you think is one and in other moment you think is the other kid, but you can easily guess the answer and all the mystery stops being interesting.

      As I said before, the first half of the book is somehow slow and boring, but the rest in entertaining. It is not one of the best books I’ve read, not even near, but is not one of the worst either.  Give it a try, you may have fun.