Cold Magic- Kate Elliott

Cold Magic

Kate Elliott

Rating: 3.5/5

The short version: The depth of the characters makes up for a very complicated setting.

This review will contain spoilers.

Before I read Cold Magic, I’d dragged my way through another fantasy book which didn’t really make sense to me. So I picked this up hoping for something I would enjoy a bit more. It took a while for me to get into it, but by the end I wasn’t disappointed. It wasn’t a masterpiece of fantasy, but it was a good way to spend a few hours.

Cold Magic is set in Victorian Europe, on the edge of an industrial revolution, but with the addition of magic and all the complications this brings. Catherine Hassi Barahal, known as Cat, thinks her biggest problems are keeping her and her cousin Bee out of trouble. Then a member of a powerful political family comes and claims an old deal, and Cat is forced to leave her home for a dramatic adventure.

The book starts off seeming to go in one direction, Cat trying to find out more about her dead father. She discovers a book written by him which, in a moment of clunky exposition, is revealed to be a codebook which should have been burned. But the same evening, she is betrayed by the aunt and uncle who raised her, in order to protect Bee. She is married and forced to leave with Andevai, her new husband. I think the first section could have been shorter, and the marriage scene didn’t really make clear what was happening, but it was a good shock to see the book go somewhere utterly different to where I was expecting.  It made me want to find out what happened next and made me more sympathetic for Cat.

Cat is an interesting character. She is constantly mentioning things like her “Cat’s instincts”, which struck me as a little bit childish and isn’t completely justified by the revelation that her real father is in fact a cat who can take human form.  It didn’t sound like something a real person would think. On the other hand, the fact that she is a decoy and how she processes that discovery make for an interesting narrative. Although she never really drives the plot, her determination to save the people she loves and find a way out of the situation still makes the book interesting to read. She also takes all the situations that hit her in her stride, and doesn’t complain about facing them. I liked that she was a character I could admire.

I also enjoyed the more complicated characters of the book. During the book, Cat discovers that she has a brother who can take human form, but spends more of his time as a cat in the spirit world. Rory is more of a cat than a human, and his mannerisms were very amusing (as were Cat’s and Bee’s reactions to him). I also enjoyed following Andevai’s journey from someone who is just following the orders of someone more powerful to someone who is willing to take a risk to stand up against the powerful people of society. I was disappointed with the character arc of his sister, and thought that it could have been developed more, but Andre was definitely the most compelling character of the book.

Unfortunately, this book won’t become a favourite of mine because it was a little overwhelming. It has to set up an alternative history of Europe and the rules of magic in society, and I never felt that this was done very clearly. I struggled to concentrate on the plot of the story when it was quite frequently interrupted by new information about the society, and I think there was just too much for one book to handle. This feeling was particularly strong when Cat crosses into the spirit world whilst escaping Andevai. I didn’t think that had been mentioned as part of the magical system, and so I didn’t understand what was going on. That was when some of the magic of the book lost me.

But the politics of the society in which Cat lives were still compelling enough to keep me reading the book, and I was fascinated by how her view of her world changed throughout the story. By the end of the book, rather than just focussing on her family, she is more determined to investigate her society and make sure it changes.

This isn’t the type of fantasy I’d normally read. I’ve enjoyed books more. But the characters made up for the clunky world-building, and the use of magic throughout the novel was interesting. I probabaly won’t go back to the other books, but perhaps I’ll read this again at some point and find that it makes more sense than it did this time round.