Review: The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry

 

It is 1912, and for the last seventy years magic has all but disappeared from the world. Yet magic is all Biddy has ever known.

Orphaned in a shipwreck as a baby, Biddy grew up on Hy-Brasil, a legendary island off the coast of Ireland hidden by magic and glimpsed by rare travelers who return with stories of wild black rabbits and a lone magician in a castle. To Biddy, the island is her home, a place of ancient trees and sea-salt air and mysteries, and the magician, Rowan, is her guardian. She loves both, but as her seventeenth birthday approaches, she is stifled by her solitude and frustrated by Rowan’s refusal to let her leave. He himself leaves almost every night, transforming into a raven and flying to the mainland, and never tells her where or why he goes.

One night, Rowan fails to come home from his mysterious travels. When Biddy ventures into his nightmares to rescue him, she learns not only where he goes every night, but the terrible things that happened in the last days of magic that caused Rowan to flee to Hy-Brasil. Rowan has powerful enemies who threaten the safety of the island. Biddy’s determination to protect her home and her guardian takes her away from the safety of Hy-Brasil, to the poorhouses of Whitechapel, a secret castle beneath London streets, the ruins of an ancient civilization, and finally to a desperate chance to restore lost magic. But the closer she comes to answers, the more she comes to question everything she has ever believed about Rowan, her origins, and the cost of bringing magic back into the world.

My Review

The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I felt so sad when the audio was over. The story was complete but I was going to miss hearing about Biddy's adventures. This is one to keep in the re-read/comfort read pile.

Biddy has spent her whole life on the island of Hy-Brasil. She washed up on the shores of the island and was raised by Rowan, a mage, and his familiar Hutchincroft. She's lived surrounded by the magic of the island but she also longs to leave the island and visit the many places she's read about in books. As her seventeenth birthday approaches the desires to know more about the world beyond her island home.

To add to her frustration, Rowan leaves the island every night on some mysterious quest returning every morning just before the sun rises. Until one day he fails to return. She manages to find where he is when she enters his dreams and is somehow able to help him escape his prison. When he returns he must finally share all the secrets he's been keeping from her. Where he goes every night in search of wild magic, the enemies who hunt him, and more about how he really came to be her guardian.

She agrees to help him figure out how to restore magic using herself as bait. The closer she gets to finding answers, the more unsettled her reality becomes.

Thank you so much to the author and Hachette for this audio to review.
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