Circleborn

Circleborn

The Broken Circle, Book 1

Nicholas Stephenson

Jul 2015, 121 pages

YA fantasy, Magic

Purchased

✭✭✭⭑

The cover is unassuming and yet perfect for this book. A young man who looks perfectly normal against a background of an abstractly shattered circle. That about sums up the whole story.

Ryan Faraway looks perfectly normal but in fact, he is not a Normal. He has magic, Blood Magic. But his father has died and hadn’t trained him in his magic before he passed. So Ryan can’t use his magic, but he feels it and gets some of the side effects of it. When he accidentally nips his girlfriend, Cindy’s tongue while kissing and gets some of her blood in his mouth, he’s able to get away from her so that she doesn’t get hurt, but by the time his magic finally escapes him he has come close to a woman and her baby and they are caught in the backlash.

Stephanie’s mother sealed her magic away while she was a child. Now that she needs it, it’s accessible to her via her cat, Skittles-Damon. Stephanie is very drawn to Ryan and has been since she first met him as a child. But she is Cindy’s BFF. Ryan is also drawn to Stephanie, especially drawn to her blood. The rest of this new generation of the Circle, Alice, Florence, and Jase, are used to using their magic. They have been fighting Eliot, his right-hand man Grayson, and his zombie henchmen. Eliot is very strong in his magic. He has nightmares and paints them. Ryan’s father had contracted with The Order to protect Ryan from Eliot, and they are doing their job, whisking him away to safety.

The pace is steady as the author jumps us from one magic conundrum to another introducing this cast of characters. The characters are pretty well done. Some better than others as we have more time with them. Not much time is wasted on setting the scene or description of things. This book is mostly action or communication whether vocal or mind-to-mind. The tension is constant and not to be satisfied in this book. This is the type of series I dislike the most. This is not a story complete within itself but part of a series of stories with this book ending in a cliffhanger and a carrot. The magics seem new. Not sure where the world is and no idea where it is heading. It is suggested to be a darker HP. Possibly, but it’s not a series I will be reading in spite of its good reviews. Try it for yourself to make your own decision if you are interested because other reviewers have given this much higher ratings.