A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske

Monday, Feb. 28, 2022--San Antonio

A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske was listed as a best book for fall in EW reviews last year, so I put it on my list of books to consider reading.  When it showed up on Libby with a wait period of 10 weeks, I put a hold on it, and it only recently became available.  It is so different from most books I read.  It's a novel with the basis that members of some families have the inherited ability to create magic spells, and it has been kept entirely secret from society in general.  There is even a secret government agency that accepts any reports of possible use of magic and a secret archive of the names of everyone who has inherited this trait.  The story involves some mysterious reports of magic being reported to have been used in some attacks against others who possess the magic ability and the disappearance of some of them.  One of the two main characters is a man who gets posted to head the secret government records office who doesn't possess any magic abilities and doesn't even know that such people exist.  He is posted there by the Prime Minister who doesn't even know what this office does (due to not being magical himself) and just needs what he thinks sounds as a low-level position where he can help a young man who is a Lord but has not inherited a fortune due to his parents having given most of their money away to charities.  The other main character is the liaison officer who meets once a week to get the most important examples of reports of magic and reports them to an office higher up in government.  (Think of it like a story involving the man who is head of a government office to collect all reports of UFOs and the liaison officer who meets weekly to see if anything is worth reporting upward for further investigation.)  At first, I was surprised about premise of certain people being able to use magic and by the fact that I felt somewhat like I was reading a book written for adolescents.  But it turned out to be an adult novel that was interesting and thought-provoking.  It is the first novel in a set of two as the story continues.  Book II is entitled A Restless Truth (The Last Binding).  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.