Rogerson, Margaret: Sorcery of Thorns

Meiner Tochter hat dieses Buch sehr gut gefallen aber obwohl es bei Ankunft komplett neu aussah, die Seiten glatt und wie frisch aus der Druckerpresse, so war das Buch offenbar bereits gelesen worden. Schwierige englische Wörter waren fein mit Bleistift unterstrichen (fast auf jeder Seite des Buches) und auf einigen Seiten fanden sich Haare(!), was leider nicht so appetitlich war.Es scheint also Menschen zu geben, die Bücher über Amazon bestellen, diese vorsichtig und ohne die Seiten zu knittern, lesen und dann vermutlich wieder zurückschicken. Das ist nicht nicht nur verwerflich sondern auch asozial den Käufern aber auch den Autoren gegenüber. Eine Schweinerei!!!

I liked „Sorcery of Thorns“ a lot. Especially the wonderful idea it’s based on and the resourceful and genial main character Elisbeth Scrivener.This is a world, where magic grimoires have to be tended to in the special Great Libraries, because although the magicians need them, they are dangerous and can turn into evil malefics that are literal monsters. The books contain magic and have wills and voices of their own. In one of those Great Libraries, Elisabeth grew up as an orphan and all she ever wanted was get apprenticed to become a Warden, a warrior in service of a Library. But when she is backed into fighting a malefic, she stumbles into a huge conspiracy, which is the start of a gripping adventure.Elisabeth is a resilient, practical no-nonsens woman, who can’t understand, why people in general and men especially think women less abled to act decisively and who actually doesn’t care. She gets into trouble at first, because of her lack of knowledge of the world outside of a Great Library, but she gets over that fast and wields her sword like the best of them.I do like the romance as well, because it’s slow burning and developing believably. Besides, Nathaniel has a good backstory and is a totally likable. But the best character for me is actually the demon Silas (yep, there are demons as well). And even the villain does what he does thinking it for the best of the world, so no black and white characters, which I appreciated.The world building is not overwhelmingly detailed, but good enough for me. And as I said: the idea behind it all was pretty cool and most notably, it was new.My only complaint about the book was its length that didn’t help the pacing. It’s 460 pages and that was way too long. Whenever there was action, the plot was a blast, which is why „Sorcery of Thorns“ still gets 4 stars.