Sam Downing

Okay, I’m now officially a fan of The Laws of Magic. Blaze of Glory (my review is here) was a fun read, but Heart of Gold is a ripper.

So in this instalment – the second in the series – our hero Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his chum George Doyle leave “Albion” on a trip to “Lutetia”, the beautiful capital city of “Gallia”. (Laws is set in an alternate universe where a) magic is real, and b) everywhere has a different name, so England is “Albion” and Paris is “Lutetia”. It even has its own “Exposition Tower”. Hee.)

Aubrey reunites with the beautiful Caroline Hepworth – who’s kind of like Hermione Granger, if Hermione were all aloof and kick-ass – and discovers a plot to destroy Lutetia and spark war across the Continent.

The right word is “rollicking”. In Gold author Michael Pryor expands the world he created in Blaze, crafting an adventure that’s immensely captivating (even in the bits where the plot feels like it’s treading water).

Pryor is not only a writer who makes me want to read, he’s a writer who makes me want to write. And now on to book three, Word of Honour!

When I was a kid I loved pretty much everything Enid Blyton wrote, with a couple of exceptions. First among these was Noddy (that little prat). Second was Fatty, the so-called “hero” of the Five Find-Outers series. Fatty was a rich, boastful boor (who was obsessed with “slimming”, though he never seemed to lose any weight), and his adventures left me with a long-running distaste for tales of the English upper-class.

The Laws of Magic novels, of which Blaze of Glory is part one, are about Aubrey Fitzwilliam – a very rich, very clever, very absurdly named English toff who attends a posh boarding school and is the son of a prominent politician. By rights I should hate him. But I don’t, and I think it’s because Michael Pryor is playing with the conventions of a genre I once loathed.

And doing an awfully good job of it. For example: Aubrey’s best chum George constantly calls him “old man”. And at one stage he dresses himself up as a street urchin called Tommy Sparks. Tommy Sparks! Brilliant.

Superficially, Laws of Magic is a lot like Harry Potter: both are about slight, dark-haired, magically gifted teenagers with a knack for landing themselves in the thick of mysterious events. But Blaze of Glory is rife with a political intrigue that’s absent from the Potter novels (from the early ones, at least): it’s set in an alternate universe in the early 20th century, as “Albion” is on the verge of war with “Holmland” (stand-ins for England and Germany, respectively).

Aubrey and George are invited to a shooting weekend at the Crown Prince’s palatial country estate, joined by politicians, aristocrats and foreign diplomats. Aubrey foils an attempt on the Prince’s life when he discovers a golem sent on an assassination mission – but who sent the golem, and why? (more…)