Spellwright

AADL has no copies of this item

"Nicodemus Weal has trained at the wizardly stronghold of Starhaven since he was a boy. His mentor, the famous wizard Agwu Shannon, taught him how to cast spells made from luminescent magical runes, how to peel written words off a page and make them physically real, how to protect himself with defensive paragraphs, and how to thrust sharply worded sentences at an enemy. Initially, Nicodemus showed great promise. Able to forge magical runes with great speed, he was once thought to be the Halcyon--a powerful spellwright prophesied to prevent the apocalypse known as the Disjunction. There was only one problem: Nicodemus couldn't spell. Every time he touched a magical text, he unintentionally corrupted it, turning a useful spell into a dangerous, potentially deadly misspell. Even now, at twenty-five, Nicodemus's problem remains so bad that he is allowed to use his magic only for janitorial tasks. While his peers advance as wizards, he is still an apprentice, living with other disabled spellwrights and reading knightly romances that fuel his dreams of escape and adventure. When a powerful wizard is murdered with a misspell, Nicodemus and Shannon both are suspected. Worse, Nicodemus dreams of a foreign city under attack from an ancient, godlike spell...and wakes to find Starhaven abuzz with news of that city's actual destruction. A second nightmare makes Nicodemus begin to question his own sanity. When there are more mysterious deaths, the authorities hunt him as a murderer. Tormented and desperate, Nicodemus has no choice but to flee his pursuers so that he can discover the truth about the murders, the nature of magic...and himself."--Dust cover flap.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Interesting premise, less than ideal execution submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on July 15, 2017, 9:16am This had an interesting premise... that magicians could write spells within the muscles of their bodies. This therefore made a "cacographer" (a dyslexic person) who was magical into a real problem, because when they touched spells, they misspelled that which they touched. One particular cacographer seems to be integral to the prophecies....

I had two problems with this book (and its sequel, as I read two of the three of the trilogy). The first is that each character seems a bit one-dimensional to me. They have a single driving motivation, or a single driving event in their history, or a single driving desire that defines basically everything they do/are. The characters did not feel deep or well rounded to me. Second, even after reading two of the three books of the trilogy, I still do not have a truly firm grasp on the complicated politics of the prophecy and all of its implications. So for me, this book and its sequel were an odd mix of too simple (in characters) and too complex in political storytelling. And I read a LOT of books, including complicated political ones.

Still, this one as a stand alone had a lot of neat ideas, which is why I still gave it 3.5 stars. I'm recommending it to my 13 year old. We'll see what he thinks. (ETA: It didn't interest him enough to engage.)