Debut author Maiga Doocy weaves a charming, captivating tale with Sorcery and Small Magics, the first installment of her Wildersongs Trilogy.
Leovander Loveage is a successful sorcerer, but only when it comes to minor charms; he keeps the stakes low and colors inside the lines. His lesser spells may not ever win his father’s respect, but his lighthearted enchantments make people happy, and he’s accepted that powerful magic never works out for him. His nemesis, Sebastian Grimm, is his opposite. Grimm’s approach to magic is confident, strong—and gets on Leo’s nerves.
Leo and Grimm are students at the Fount, where Leo is a scriver, or writer of spells, and Grimm is a caster. They get into trouble when Grimm accidentally casts an illegal spell that binds Leo to obey his commands. It’s a power imbalance that is refreshingly never abused: Rather, it compels these two young sorcerers to work together to find a counterspell before anyone finds out what happened. They’ll have to employ the help of a powerful sorcerer who supposedly lives deep in the Unquiet Wood, a forest full of monsters and other dark things. As they embark on a quest together, it becomes clear that this grumpy-sunshine pairing just needed the right opportunity to find their way to happiness.
Doocy makes the academic pursuit of magic seem so normal and tactile that the reader feels they might open their own desk drawer and find quills and paper and ink. Matching the light tone of Leo’s witty narration, the stakes of using forbidden magic aren’t high beyond the personal fallout for him and Grimm: The world won’t end, the walls around the Fount won’t crumble, nobody’s going to die—but they will get cast out of school. Leo and Grimm are realistically flawed, lovingly hopeful characters, both of whom discover that they have more inner strength than they ever suspected. The two men have “never been anything but too much for each other,” but by the end of Sorcery and Small Magics, “too much” is just enough.
