The Magician’s Workshop by Christopher Hansen (Book Review #132)

This review was kindly requested by the author, Christopher Hansen

This is the first book of its series. It is a young adult fantasy novel situated in the land of O’Ceea where everyone has the ability to create magic. However, some have stronger projections than others. Projections have the power to alter reality for good or for evil. The ones that have more substantial projections also have the possibility of having “color” within them. These are people that are able to join the magician’s workshop becoming the most powerful, successful, famous, and influential of all.

The ability for using projections is very cool. They can change the taste of something atrocious to something superb. Or you can send projected messages to one another without anyone hearing it. You can project rain and so many interesting things.

The festival of stars is where the color ceremony commences. This is where the panel decides if you have color or not. Hence, it is an immense deal for everyone that comes of age to attend, and almost everyone wishes that they get chosen.

Layauna is living with her mother. Her father has gone, and all she has is her family. She believes that her projections are worthless and that she is weak, however, when her famous grandfather, Eyan comes to visit her, he discovers that she possesses an unyielding potential of having color. He takes her back with him so that she could have better training. Eyan is a retired yellow magician of the third magnitude, which is a big deal. Everyone with such a status has a collar and carries it with themselves as a proud item.

Kai, on the other hand, is desperately trying to fit in. Everyone believes that he is tainted and that he anyone associating with him will lose his color. There is a little backstory exampling why everyone thinks this way, and so Kai is desperate to prove everyone wrong. This places a lot of pressure on him. His friends, Talia, snap, Weston, and luge are all also looking forward to the ceremony.

In summary, there are nine colors, five regions, and three privilege levels in this magical world. I found the book to be written excellently for the young adult audience. The flow and connectivity of the chapters were in good standing. There is an immense amount of dialogue on the content of the book. I believe this is a beautiful thing for the young reader but for adults, this may come as annoying.

The entire book provides sufficient backstory for the second book. You can easily and fully comprehend the world’s setting and the characters before they attend the ceremony in book two. Therefore, I believe anyone considering buying this book might as well benefit from buying them all, as they are not standalone novels.

Written by Jeyran Main

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