Majic

Well, after my recent purchase of Android, I got back into reading books again. Using <a href="http://www.fbreader.org/">FBReader's</a> built-in option for searching and downloading free e-books, I've stumbled upon a very nice fantasy book written by <a href="http://ecmock.blogspot.com/">Elizabeth C. Mock</a> titled <a href="Shatter">http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/17486</a>.

The book is supposed to be the first in a <a href="http://thechildrenofman.blogspot.com/">The Children of Man</a> trilogy, and I must admit that I look forward to the second book as well. Hopefully it won't take too long to have the second book available for download (even if I need to pay for it) through some similar service.

The author's writing style is very good, with perfect balance between dialogs and events. Although fiction, I'd say it's not epic in its nature, and revolves more around the interactions between characters. What starts-out as an (almost) innocent quest turns into quite a complex story revolving around a betrayal committed by a particular ''order'' of magic-users.

The system of magic in the book is laid out interestingly, although it lacks some more explanation (maybe in the form of appendix). By the end of the book one does catch-up at how it actually all works. The gist of it is that the magic can be classified by colours, with each colour representing a single school of magic (dedicated to a particular field, like healing, art etc). Each colour is actually taught by a different ''order''.

The only flaw I've encountered is that there seems to be a lot of couple-matching in the book (that is, almost every character has a possible mate in the party), which feels a bit forced throughout the book.

The book is nevertheless worth the reading, and I can whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who likes to read fiction.