Minor Mage

Minor Mage is firmly in the "kid goes on scary quest and comes back stronger" genre. The 12-year-old protagonist is cast out to complete a nigh-impossible quest alone (aside from his armadillo familiar), facing ghouls and starvation and bandits and ghosts and murderers. He's a wizard, yes, but he's barely half-trained and only knows a handful of spells (though his herbal lore is pretty strong). Like the young heroes of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking and Illuminations, he has to learn how to make the most of his limited abilities in order to survive -- only this story takes place not in a city but mostly in wilderness an abandoned farmlands.

From an adult perspective, Oliver's constant lamenting that he's "only a minor mage" starts to grate after a while. But that's not the perspective it's written for: it's a kids' book, and operates on kids' fantasy logic.

Speaking of the target audience: In the afterward, Kingfisher/Vernon talks about trying to convince editors that yes, this is a children's book, and getting constant pushback that it's "too scary." (This is how she ended up publishing it as Kingfisher rather than Vernon) It reminded me of similar comments Neil Gaiman wrote about Coraline, remarking that it was too scary for adults but not too scary for children.

Sometimes I wonder: Do these editors remember being 12?

(Cross-posted at my website.)

After really enjoying the Clockwork Boys books by Kingfisher I decided to hunt down other books by her and discovered Minor Mage, which is also completely charming. It's really a YA book, although apparently her publishers refused to publish it as such as it does have some scary characters (some human-eating ghuls) and various references to death. Nonetheless, can't say it's any more grim than many of the original fairy tales that children have enjoyed for centuries, so unless your kids are super sensitive I'd give it to them to enjoy.

The protagonist is Oliver, a 12 year old minor mage who knows only three spells (one of which is to control his allergies to armadillos). Oliver gets by with the little he learned before the town's senile old wizard died, and by a lot of trial and error. But when a drought hits Oliver's tiny farming town, he's the only one who has a chance to bring the rains back, so he sets off on a dangerous journey accompanied only by his familiar (an armadillo named Eglamarck). Oliver's a charming protagonist, the world is somehow both cozy and dangerous at the same time, the lessons Oliver learns along the way are relevant to readers of all ages, and the whole adventure is extremely readable and over too soon.