SORCERY AND SMALL MAGICS - Maiga Doocy

4 stars

Delighted to report that I loved this—mostly due to the fact that I am not at all what you'd consider to be a "cozy fantasy" reader! This softer fantasy was filled with a memorably personable POV, some magical hijinks, a slowwww burn romantic angle, and a fun plot.

Sorcery and Small Magics follows the tale of our main point-of-view (POV) character, Leo Loveage, who is a good-time guy, mischievous and under-performing student, prolific musician, chaos goblin, and the writer of "small magics".

Leo's here for a good time, you understand, and not for a long time.

As a member of the gentry class, he comes from money and is going to end up with money, and therefore he's a bit petulantly irritated that he has to attend five years' worth of magical academy preparations in order to inherit his family's estate. Leo isn't sure why his father is so insistent on this--it's not like Leo can ever amount to anything, after all, because he's incapable of doing any serious levels of magic and is stuck with the basic, child-level charm work despite his classmates' proficiencies in advanced spell making.

In Leo's world, there are those who write the magics (like himself) and those who can cast the written magics.

One of those magic casters is Leo's academic nemesis: Sebastian Grimm. Sebastian is everything Leo is not—he's deadly serious, austerely studious, insanely talented, and capable of extremely large feats of magic.

Leo hates him, you understand.

So when Leo and Sebastian find themselves paired for a magic task and accidentally bind themselves together with a forbidden spell??? Disaster. Extra disaster points because they can't stand each other. Extra EXTRA disaster points because it means they're going to be bonded metaphorically at the hip until they figure it out.

Cue the hijinks music...

Okay, so right off the top—as you can likely tell, this is not a serious fantasy novel. This is a slightly irreverent, mostly fun, overwhelmingly lighthearted fantasy romp that involves a light level of drama and a lot of interesting side quests and fun banter-heavy scenes.

I went into Sorcery and Small Magics with zero expectations, and I loved it. Did I wish the stakes were more... present? Yes. Did I also wish we had some #ANGST to give us some emotional hand-wringing? Yes. But was I pleasantly surprised at how much I fell for these characters and their relatively easily resolved dramas anyway?? Also yes.

Come for the fun, stay for the fun. This was well done in its subniche genre. I'm looking forward to the next one!