The Geomagician
Jennifer Mandula’s historical fantasy tackles paleontology versus religious ethics along with geomagical happenings. There are five large roles in play, balanced against many bit players, including cameos from 19th-century historical geologists such as Conybeare, Lyell, and Mantell. In Victorian Lyme Regis, following a landslide, fossilist Mary Anning comes across an egg beneath a fossilised mother pterodactyl. Held delicately between her palms, the egg begins to crack, and a pterodactyl pecks his way out, orange beak first. Mary names him Ajax.
Mary, Henry, and Lucy and her brother, Edgar, were inseparable as children, but adulthood saw them pursuing differing interests, three blessed with financial fortune, while Mary still struggles, selling her finds for a pittance. Geologist William Buckland, ever her friend and mentor, faithfully buys her specimens, but poor folk like Mary must sometimes sell their reliq magic to survive. The magic accumulated and stored in a fossil reliq can lawfully be sold to a reliquemist—a shameful thing for those in need. After years alone, Mary is both heartened and apprehensive when Henry reappears in her life. Perhaps she can realise her lifelong dream to be a geomagician with Henry’s and William’s support. Ajax must be presented to the London Geomagical Society, but Mary ignores William’s specific warnings to stay home. Will the irresistible, damnable Henry honour his promise or betray her interests?
This is a strikingly inventive world, and Mandula is an accomplished writer. She sprinkles a bit of magic onto a deliciously clever, believable Victorian world, leaving readers to juggle politics, street demos, scientific study, Protestantism (including the archbishop and his Inquisitors), power plays, greed, betrayal—all recognisable things. Of course, with a live pterodactyl tearing about, the story is not without its supernatural marvels. Ajax is such a delight, I want to adopt him. Maybe after the sequel? A splendid debut.
