Mairelon the Magician by Patricia C. Wrede

[meganbmoore]

Kim is a teenaged street urchin in a Regency era London different from our own only (apparently) in that magic-and magicians-are real. When Kim is hired to steal a silver bowl from a stage magician named Mairelon, she’s caught in a magic trap and captured by the magician. Mairelon, immediately recognizing her as a girl and not the boy she disguises herself as, decides to take her own and train her as an apprentice, not only for the stage, but also for her less-than-scrupulous skills she’s acquired on the streets. Soon, she learns he’s a real magician, not a simple stage one, and that the silver bowl is part of a set he was accused of stealing five years ago, and that he’s trying to recover, and off they go on an adventure to find the rest of the set.

It is, of course, all for the greater good of England.

The book is very fun, and more caper-adventure than anything else, with half of England also after the Saltash Set, resulting in multiple attempted burglaries with the entire cast engaging in antics on scene, all sorts of people randomly appearing at the scene of the climax, and a lot of fun supporting (and lead) characters. The ending seems to be setting the book up for a sequel, but Amazon doesn’t tell me that there’s one currently in print.