Rezension zu "Illicit Magic: Book 1, Stella Mayweather Series (Volume 1)" von Camilla Chafer
This was the second time I’ve read „Illicit Magic“ and it still awed me. I‘ve recently bought the last part of the Stella Mayweather series so I felt the need to reread the first five books before I can finally get to how it will all come to an end. That’s also the perfect opportunity to leave my thoughts on this one and the other books.
„Illicit Magic“ is a fast-paced urban-fantasy story containing a lot of magic and love. Of both Stella does not know that much about especially not about the former. Her magical abilities are not something she is too keen to embrace because they are the main cause of her always being the outsider, the odd one people tend to avoid, the freak. And there is the not so little problem, too, of the arising group of people that have started to hunt those like her down, burn them just like it was done in the middle ages.
I enjoyed it very much to be there with Stella when she made the first steps into the magical world. You never know more than she does because the story is told from her point of view. So you have the opportunity to puzzle out the motives of those who have saved her from being caught by the witch hunters, the so-called members of the Brotherhood. It becomes apparent that they are not the only ones that are a threat to her. Solving that mystery with her was quite exciting.
Another large part of the book is Stella finding friends and love for the very first time, something that is not too easy when you don’t know who to trust. Although her first kiss appears to come quite sudden there will be an explanation why later in the book. I liked how the relationships developed, not too fast, and bit by bit you got to know the different characters better and better. Every one of them is unique and most of them grew on me pretty fast. Because of that I was quite sad about the tragedy that happened at the end of the story.
The ending in itself leaves many things unanswered, not too many, but enough that I’m curious about how Stella’s life is going to be now that she has made this certain move. The destiny of some of the other characters is another thing I’m very interested in. Have they survived? Who will we meet again in the next part of the series?
Apart from witches and wizards there seem to be other creatures existing. In this book we had a vampire and a daemon, although there seems to be differentiated somehow between demons and daemons. „Illicit Magic“ has its main focus on witches though so I can’t say more now than that the creatures don’t get along too well. I hope we will find out more in the following books.
This book and the series as a whole deserves far more attention than it currently has. It is full of magic, love, mysteries and even has some action parts in it. It is written in a way that makes you fly through the pages and makes you laugh about the many witty thoughts Stella has about the situations she finds herself in. I only can strongly recommend reading this book, so please go ahead and do it.