Magyk Septimus Heap Book One Review

Title: Magyk

Author: Angie Sage

Illustrator: Mark Zug

Genre: Fantasy

Age: 9+

Pages: 564 (paperback)

Publisher: HarperCollins

        Silas Heap was on his way back home when he found a baby girl on the side of the street. It was a cold night and the child was bound to die if he didn't do anything so he took her home. Soon Silas' wife was giving birth to their seventh son. Tragedy struck as they were announced that the child had died in labour. The family decides to raise the young girl as one of their own and name her Jenna. Ten years later the ExtraOrdinary wizard pays them a visit, revealing that Jenna is in fact a princess and the Queen had died the night Silas found her. With news like this the Heap family know they are in grave danger and must run far away before the Supreme custodian catches them! A world filled with magic, a princess, and an evil wizard, anything is possible!

        Magyk has a great foundation containing magical abilities, queens and princesses, assassins, and they all revolve around a family of 9. With that in mind I would definitely take the book home, but what made it all worth it was the adventures and the fast paced action.

        A novel needs an image for it to sell, just like any other products out there. I bet a lot of readers here do judge a book by its cover! Heck I do it all the time. Now this is where Magyk can get credit. The cover art is just so intriguing. It's an image of a long lost journal with a dragon ring in the center. The words are very well written, with a magical look. The colors really work together and in general it looks wonderful!

        Angie Sage created the novel for younger readers. With that in mind, I believe that even a 10 year old could most likely figure out the plot twists. They were just too predictable and weren't cloaked well enough by other events. This was disappointing because the plot twists were one of the biggest plot drivers and could had made the story all together more interesting.

         The biggest downfall for me was that there were too many characters. With the start of the story you were introduced to around 10 characters or so and every chapter there were more and more. This meant that as a reader you weren't able to create any bonds or relationships with the characters. Also one of the biggest problems, character wise, was that  there wasn't any main character so to speak. The points of views were changed constantly and even with a world filled with 100 characters you can find a way to bond with the main character. That wasn't the case since there weren't any.

        The length of the book got to me a bit. It was a bit lengthy. 500 pages is a lot, especially since it's a 9+ novel so it's meant for children and some young adults. The author should have cut down on her details. She should have also described the setting in a larger mindset. We know they are someplace with a castle and there's a swamp someplace as well but the setting was very vague and unexplained.

        To summarize, the first installment of the series, Magyk, had many aspects that can make a fantasy novel a great one, but it contained many quirks that just pushed it further back from that title. I would recommend it to fellow fantasy lovers but I would not re-read it and most likely will not purchase the next book in the series of 7 total novels.


Available on Amazon

Rating: 3/5