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Smoke and Summons

Numina, Book 1

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A captivating world of monsters and magic from the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Paper Magician Series.

As a human vessel for an ancient spirit, Sandis lives no ordinary life. At the command of her master, she can be transformed against her will into his weapon - a raging monster summoned to do his bidding. Unlike other vessels, Sandis can host extremely powerful spirits, but hosting such creatures can be fatal. To stay alive, she must run. And in a city fueled by smoke and corruption, she finds a surprising ally.

A cunning thief for hire, Rone owns a rare device that grants him immortality for one minute every day - a unique advantage that will come in handy in Sandis’s fight for freedom. But Sandis’s master knows how powerful she is. He’s determined to get her back, and he has the manpower to find her, wherever she runs.

Now, to outwit her pursuers, Sandis must put all her trust in Rone and his immortal device. For her master has summoned more than mere men to hunt her down....

©2019 Charlie N Holmberg LLC. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Epic Fantasy Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction & Fantasy
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Since Holmberg's Paper Magician series was wonderful, I expected to really enjoy this trilogy. I think the plot was interesting enough, but I was deeply disappointed by characterisation. I'm especially disappointed that a female author wrote such a timid and needy female protaganist and then matched her to a male character who was possessive and overprotective without any indication of critical reflection or awareness of the fact that she was reproducing crude stereotypes. It was really distracting, and made it hard to really invest in the story as much as I wanted to. Hopefully her next works will provide more nuance. I didn't notice these issues in the paper/plastic magician world. But perhaps you wouldn't notice it when the context is the Victorian era. Then gender stereotypes seem more faithful to how far society had progressed at the time. But even considering that, I still think her characters there were much better.

Weak on characters

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The performance was great. I’m not always a fan of the double narrator, especially when they start to speak for each character, but I got into after no time at all. The story is good, I find the premise interesting, but it isn’t as strong as previous stories I’ve read/listened to by Charlie. Paper Magician and Spellbreaker were superior, however I will finish this trilogy as I’m curious to see where it goes.

A good story

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this book is beautiful fantasic start to a new world to a new series it is a whirlwind beautiful written beautifully voice acted

beautiful story

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Absolutely brilliant story. Merriman and Ezzo bring the characters perfectly to life. Ezzo especially is spectacular, she’ll make you cry tears of both joy and heartbreak for Sandis.
If you like gritty “reality with a twist”, action packed and slow burn romance stories then this is the trilogy for you!

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