The Mislaid Magician by Caroline Stevermer and Patricia C. Wrede

[meganbmoore]

Set ten years after The Grand Tour, Kate and Cecy (and their husbands, of course, though I sometimes wonder if Thomas and James feel like third wheels when Kate and Cecy get together) have settled into respectable married lives. Or what passes as normal in an early 19th century where magic is common place. Things are not to remain peaceful, however (though I find it difficult to believe there were no adventures for ten years, given that they couldn’t escape them even on their shared honeymoon) and James is asked to investigate strange happenings on the leylines. Cecy, naturally, goes with him, and so Kate and Thomas are asked to look after their children while they’re away. Things aren’t calm there, however, as Kate’s flighty sister has come to stay with them, and strange men are seen lurking about.

I liked this more than The Grand Tour (which is not to say that I didn’t like that one), but not as much as Sorcery and Cecelia. Much of it, I think, is the return to letter format, but I also like seeing what they were up to years later even more than what they were up to a few months later. It was also interesting to have James and Thomas’s letters to each other (something that was made absolutely necessary for a bit by one plot point) as I think it can be easy to forget that they were also friends before they married the cousins, though I don’t think their relationship carried over as well as Kate and Cecy’s did in either book. I think, though, that that might be because the success of The Mislaid Magician depends on Sorcery and Cecelia, and their letters seem to be a way to maintain the format but add something extra. I have no idea if what I’m trying to say here makes sense.

On the one hand, I kind of like the reversal in adventure types between the two books-in Sorcery and Cecelia, Kate and Thomas have the flashy adventure, while Cecy and James have the more “domestic” one, and it’s reversed here-but it’s rather odd to see Kate and Thomas at home. Partly because they just seem more likely to go on adventures to me, but also because they seemed more reactive than proactive for the most part. Though I did enjoy how the letters-especially Thomas’s-indicated that they were both going completely stir-crazy. I think it’s also worth noting that I was entertained by people talking about their children! Ok, so it was their children having magic and being abducted by gypsies and finding stalkery people in the bushes, but still!