An Inheritance of Magic - Benedict Jacka

An Inheritance of Magic

By Benedict Jacka

  • Release Date: 2023-10-10
  • Genre: Contemporary
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 88 Ratings

Description

The super-rich control everything—including magic—in this thrilling and brilliant, contemporary fantasy from the author of the Alex Verus novels.

The wealthy seem to exist in a different, glittering world from the rest of us. Almost as if by . . . magic.

Stephen Oakwood is a young man on the edge of this hidden world. He has talent and potential, but turning that potential into magical power takes money, opportunity, and training. All Stephen has is a minimum wage job and a cat. 

But when a chance encounter with a member of House Ashford gets him noticed by the wrong people, Stephen is thrown in the deep end. For centuries, the vast corporations and aristocratic Houses of the magical world have grown impossibly rich and influential by hoarding their knowledge. To survive, Stephen will have to take his talent and build it up into something greater—for only then can he beat them at their own game.

Reviews

  • Interesting but clearly first in a series

    4
    By straea
    This book was interesting and the world-building was well-done, but it was clearly the first book in a series and is not in any way a standalone book. If you’re not already a Jacka fan (for me, this was my first book by him) I’m not sure it’s worth the time to read this before the second book in the series comes out. Personally I struggled somewhat with how the protagonist Stephen seems to be subtly misogynistic; for me the most cringeworthy part was when a woman character was clearly alluding to things like potentially being sexually assaulted and Stephen thought frustratedly that she didn’t understand that unsafe situations were more dangerous for men. I would have found this troubling even if I hadn’t read this book immediately after reading a book about the long aftermath of two teenage boys raping a young teen girl, but that made it especially jarring.