Order “Spellbound” HERE

Read An Excerpt HERE

Read FBC’s Review of “Spellwright”

Read FBC’s Review of “Spellbound”

Blake Charlton overcame severe dyslexia in seventh grade when he began sneaking fantasy and science fiction books into special ed study hall. Inspired, he went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University. From here, Blake worked at numerous jobs—English teacher, biomedical technical writer, learning-disability tutor, etc.—while finishing his debut novel, Spellwright, the first volume in The Spellwright Trilogy. In the following interview, Blake Charlton talks about Spellbound, the second volume in The Spellwright Trilogy; the new protagonist, setting and magic in Spellbound; cover art and much more...

Blake: I started Spellwright when I was 20 years old and bored in an English lecture. I didn’t know much about writing fiction then and I certainly knew nothing about the publishing industry. I wrote and rewrote Spellwright before I picked up an agent, who had me rewrite it twice more. I picked up an editor who had me rewrite it twice more again. Then came editing and polishing. Not until I was 30 did the book hit the shelves. I’m happy with the result, but now it feels like the work of an author learning his trade. Working on one book for a decade can be a disadvantage. Many of my peers toss out one or two or twelve books before publishing; there’s something wonderful in that—losing the mistakes you made when you were setting out. Maybe disadvantages too. I wouldn’t know. Spellwright ended up being a composition of my twenties painted over each other like lacquer: Nicodemus reflected the life I had known as a 19-year-old special ed student, Shannon what I had known as a special ed teacher and tutor at 25, etc etc.

Spellbound, on the other hand, was written entirely within my 30th year, after two years of medical school. Add to that I had more writing experience under my belt, and the result was an experience much more satisfying than that of the previous book. There were ups and downs—times when I was stumped or my beta-readers found flaws or my editors hated something. But I only had two rounds of major rewrites, and everyone so far agrees that the resulting book is better than my first. I’m crossing every possible appendage that the readers agree.

Blake: Seems to me that today the most popular mode of a serializing an epic fantasy is one of a building, surging progression reaching a final crescendo—a bit like a tidal wave or an avalanche. Tolkien being the prime mover, as always. More contemporary examples would be Jordan, Martin, etc. The epic forces at play in the world are described in continuous and ever greater detail. The story has one beginning, an indeterminate (one sometimes fears infinite) number of surges, and one final climactic ending. Done well, the first and last books take care of themselves, and the middle books start during troughs and end just after satisfying surges. I love these epics. I grew up on them. But I have no interest in writing one. In part, this is because I can’t; my medical career doesn’t allow for the required time. But in part, this is because I find an alternative mode of serialization much interesting.

I wanted to write an epic that was not a continuous progression but a set of contained and enjoyable stories. An epic not like a wave but like a stone skipping across the water. In this, as in many things, I am deliberately imitating Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea books. I think this is a wonderful way to tell an epic; as you (so kindly) remarked, it allows one to tell self-contained stories while advancing the series and tying up the loose ends. If done expertly (I’m not so sure I’ve achieved this), it allows new readers to enter into a series at different books. Of course, there are disadvantages to using an alternative mode. I’ve already been receiving emails from readers distressed that Spellbound won’t be a “true sequel,” because it takes place ten years after the first book. Some critics—expecting the traditional proliferation of point-of-view characters that split up to cover a continent—complain that my series lacks ‘world building’ because I contain my stories to one region. In the end, I think there’s a line authors have to walk between experimenting with novel aspects of storytelling, which have novel advantages and limitations, and providing enough of the traditional and expected aspects to please readers.

Blake: Spellwright’s setting was taken from the institution of the European university; Starhaven architecture and culture were inspired by my time at Yale University. I think it’s safe to say Spellwright fits into the “magical academy” subgenre, hopefully the concept of disability in magic gave it a fresh twist. One reviewer called it “Harry Potter and the Special Ed Classroom.” I think he was trying to be snide, but I was pretty flattered by the comparison. The setting for Spellbound is deliberately very different. I wanted to take the story out of the academy and show a larger slice of my world. I wanted the reader’s experience to mirror the experience of a young wizard (or for that matter most young people today), who grew up knowing only school and then had to readjust to “the real world.”

Most of Spellbound’s action takes place in Avel, which is a thriving city in the deep savannah of the kingdom of Spires. I drew inspiration for Spirish culture and architecture from the medieval cities of Morocco. As a young man, I spent a summer in the city of Meknes, in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, as part of a student exchange program. A few months later, I travelled in Spain a bit and saw a lot of similar architectural and cultural elements. I remember finding it fascinating how both Moroccan and Spanish cuisine use the spice cumin. I was also struck by some unexpected similarities between the two languages. For example, the Spanish word for rice “arroz” came from the Andalusian Arabic word “aruzz.” Something else that caught my interest was the fact that I had encountered similar cultural elements in the Americas. Mexican cuisine also uses cumin and many of the grandest Latin American structures have Moorish (read Moroccan) elements. Two years ago I was fortunate enough to visit Peru. In Lima, I toured El Covento de San Francisco and about half way through the tour found myself standing under an ornate and beautiful ceiling decorated with a “Moorish Star,” which was almost a replica of one such pattern I had seen as a teenager in North Africa.  So that cultural exposure was what planted the seed of inspiration. I read up on Al Andalusia, on several of the many different Catholic kingdoms of medieval Spain, and on the (much later) Ottoman Empire’s settlements in North Africa. I mashed all of them together, added some purely imaginary cultural, political, and magical (see below) elements to create Spires. For the land surrounding Spires, I mashed up the geography of North Africa and my native North California—there are, you may be surprised to learn, a lot of similarities between the two. The result was a city, a region, and a culture I loved to explore, which I hope others will too.

Blake: When reading up on Arabic architecture, I learned about an ancient architectural device used in Arabic and Persian buildings to create ventilation and which is most commonly translated into English as a “windcatcher.” I’ve read of several variations on the device, but most commonly I’ve read of windcatchers that divert wind down a tower—sometimes underground—and then through a building providing it with cooling ventilation. At the same time, I was dreaming up the magical language that the Spirish spellwrights, called hierophants, would use.

From my first conception of the trilogy’s magic system, I wanted runes to have to be ‘charged’ by a spellwright. As is commonly remarked, many authors place limitations or ‘costs’ upon magic. Perhaps not surprising given my medical background, the cost I chose was physiological. Runes must be created by muscles and require energy in the same way movement requires energy. Some people are stronger than others; some spellwrights are more prolific than others. But being a student of physiology, I knew that there are different types of muscle tissue. So then, it followed, different types of muscle should create different types of magical runes. In Spellwright, we saw mostly runes created in skeletal muscle, which is the most abundant type of muscle that responds to voluntary or reflex nerve stimulation to move an arm or leg or whatever. Cardiac muscle—the muscle of the heart—is very different. It never rests and generates its electrical impulses to coordinate its contraction. The heart moves blood, blood moves oxygen (and other things), and oxygen comes from the air. So, it seems logical to me, that the runes of the heart muscle should be concerned with air.

There was one final spark that contributed to the creation of the hierophantic language. When reading about the magic of the Middle East, one cannot ignore the phenomenon of the flying carpet. In the post Disney’s Aladdin world, we tend to think of flying carpets as campy, almost childish. So there could be no outright flying carpets in my book. But in an effort to capture that dream-like sense of flying and weightlessness that doubtless the first flying carpet stories invoked, I made my final connection: Hierophantic language might be stored on cloth. While in cloth, the language could move about as powerfully as the wizardly languages; however, if once the runes left cloth they would turn into wind. This meant that skilled hierophants could store up large quantities of their language, write them on to prodigious amounts of cloth and create animated kites, ship sails that generated their own wind, even airships. What was more, the hierophants could create massive wind-powered turbines that could harness the power of the wind and augment their ability to create more runes. Naturally, I called these turbines ‘windcatchers.’

Hopefully, none of this is obvious or distracting to the casual reader. And hopefully, I did a better job of leaving out the technical aspect of an intricate magic system while still preserving the sense of wonder and fun that such intricacy can inspire.

Blake: Francesca may or may not be the conglomeration of A) a very expressive female surgeon with whom I have worked, B) my favorite high school English teacher, C) Francesca da Rimini from Canto V of Dante’s Inferno, and C) several, forever-unnamed ex-girlfriends. Or rather, I should say that Fran may have started out as such a conglomeration but then quickly developed her own voice that now seems to me perfectly unique.

I think of Spellbound as being Francesca’s book in the way that Spellwright was Nicodemus’s book. Writing Fran is a joy, mostly. By her nature, she is something of a trickster. She wants to push the envelope. My biggest task with her is making sure I don’t let her go too far, that she didn’t take over the whole book. One of the major rewrites was shifting events around so that Fran did a better job of sharing the limelight with Nico. A beta-reader of mine described Francesca as “the love child of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Locke Lamora.” I was pretty flattered by that comparison with one reservation: “Locke gets to drop the F-bomb in his books,” which is something that Fran would have loved to do.

Blake: Without spoiling for those who haven’t read Spellbound, I can’t tell you much. I can say that I’m in a quandary about the title. The first working title was “Disjunction,” because it is about—as the readers of the trilogy might expect—the foretold conflict of the same name. However, it seems a number of readers object to the grammatical sound of this title. It has made more than few sing an altered version of “Conjunction, conjunction, what’s your function?” at me. So…that’s out. Meanwhile, my UK editor was pushing for the world “spell” to appear in the title for branding purposes. But I didn’t think Spellcheck, or Spellingbee, passed muster.  So, presently, I’m toying with the titles “Disspell,” which I like a bit and “Spellbreaker,” which I like a lot. If you or any of your readers have a strong opinion, feel free to let me know about it.

Oh, last thing, perhaps I can say without spoiling that the events of book three will take place roughly thirty years after the end of Spellbound.

Blake: This is the very big, very distracting question that hangs over the end of my Tor book contract. It’s complicated by medical training. Until this year, I easily balanced the classroom and research demands of medical school with writing. I made my own schedule and as long as I met my deadlines, there was no problem. This year is my first as a “clinical” medical student. My schedule is no longer my own. The work hours and the tasks can be all-consuming. Stanford has been gracious enough to give me time off to promote Spellbound, but I simply cannot write while studying and working a surgery or an internal medicine rotation. However, fairly soon, I’ll complete my clinical requirements and have about a year to knock off the rest of book three. But thereafter I will start residency, in what specialty of medicine I don’t yet know. From everything I have heard, read, or seen, residency is an order of magnitude more consuming than medical school. So, my first goal will be to survive…hopefully with a good portion of my happiness and most if not all of my sanity intact.

That said, I plan to write until they nail my coffin shut. As those who have read Spellbound might guess, taking care of patients has exposed me to a great deal of inspiring, terrifying, awe-inducing experiences that cry out for the page. My fourth book will not likely be in the Spellwright universe. Another Spellwright trilogy may be in the works later on, but now I’m itching to try out several other ideas: a Magic Realism / New Weird novel inspired by the time I spent in special ed and by my experiences taking care of disabled children in the hospital; a humorous novel about the foibles of the American medical system (and they are legion); a Tim Powers-ish secret history novel about Thomas Lodge, a playwright who competed with Shakespeare but then became a physician. I daydream about these things when studying for a massive exam or when recovering from an overnight shift, but how it’s all going to fit together…well…at the very least it’ll be interesting to see how that happens.

Blake: I have always loved Todd’s work. When I first signed with Tor, one of my first questions was if I could get Todd to do the art. He and Tor’s art director, Irene Gallo, have done a fantastic job on both books. Spellwright’s themes are night, stone, coming of age, delving down. Spellbound’s themes are daylight, air, romance, flying higher. If you put the books side by side, you can really see what a phenomenal job Todd and Irene did in capturing the feel of both books. I had only one concern about the Spellbound cover: I wanted Francesca to be on it. Which, if you’ve read the book and think about what you are seeing when looking at the cover, might make you smile. As for book three’s cover, that’s nothing to report as of now. Likely I won’t get onto Todd’s dance card until I have a completed manuscript, and I can’t honestly speculate on when that might be. I can say that the themes for book three will be twilight, water, war, and travel.

I also like the UK covers, but the US covers are more my style. I am often told that British readers favor books with more iconic artwork, and in that the UK covers do a fine job of purveying that. As I understand it, the selection of a golden sphere for Spellwright was based on the spherical Numinous spell cast in the library scene of that book, where as the blue diamond of the Spellbound cover was taken from both the blue hierophantic language and the theme of the “diamond mind.” If Voyager keeps to that theme, I would suspect the cover for book three would illustrate a deep red language…of what geometry I couldn’t yet guess.

What I find most interesting is that in some European countries I am marketed as young adult fantasy, others as adult. I deliberately tried to walk the line between the two; my goal was to make a 15-year-old reading the book feel as sophisticated as a 55-year-old, and a 55-year-old as filled with wonder as the 15-year-old. The covers in the countries reflect the choice to position the book as YA or not in interesting ways.

Blake: Eh. I’ve seen most of the episodes. They’re not bad. I just finished A Dance with Dragons  *mild spoiler warning* and feel almost as irked with the series as I did after reading the Red Wedding. Likely I’m a little overloaded on GRRM right now, so take what follows with a grain of salt. But, it seems to me that we are reaching the pinnacle of the gritty (or nonconciliatory or whatever-it’s-called-these-days) school of epic fantasy. There are already a few GRRM knock-offs out there, and I’d guess the success of the HBO series is going to sponsor more of them. Nothing succeeds like success, they say, and nothing annoys like excess. Just a guess, but I’d put my money on a continued proliferation of Martonian fantasy for a few years more and then a rise of a school that breaks away from the mainstream. Overall, I think this will be a good thing for fantasy literature, bringing more people and diversity into the genre; however, it’s a pattern of rise and fall that has happened before and likely will happen again.

Blake: I love the word more than the medium. Being more auditory than visual, I listen to far more audiobooks than I read on paper or computer screen. I don’t think any particular medium (audio, paper, screen) is better than any other. There’s no part of the human body so diverse as the brain, and I believe that some people are better wired for one medium versus another. I think it’s wonderful that we often have a choice of medium for a given book. However, I do worry about how e-books might change the economics of publishing. I have a writing friend who is fond of saying that “In publishing, one can make a killing but not a living.” Meaning that there are plenty of examples of astoundingly rich authors (JK Rowling, Steven King, etc) and a near infinite number of examples of starving authors, but there are frighteningly few who can live in between as stable, middleclass authors. I worry that the decline in dead-tree based book sales and the increasing prevalence of pirated text online could conspire to completely kill off the middle class author. Whether or not it will, I have no idea. As far as I know the data to answer that question simply doesn’t yet exist, so I distrust anyone predicting either doom or total redemption.

Having two careers makes my situation a little be different. I aim to follow the much larger footsteps of the great Russian author and physician Anton Chekhov, who once said, “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.” It’s a life that has advantages and disadvantages: I would guess that I worry less about the economics of publishing than some fulltime writers do, but on the flip side, I will never be as prolific as they are.

Blake: For me, constantly reading is almost more important than constantly writing. I still manage to get a book or two in a month, mostly audiobooks when driving to or from the hospital, or when jogging. Sometimes I feel that reading is the only thing that keeps medical school from swallowing me whole.

The most powerful book I’ve read so far this year is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was a bit slow out of the gates and it’s science fictional premise is facile, but then it blooms into an engaging and quiet narration of childhood, innocence, sex, mortality, and character. It’s short, brilliant, heartbreaking. The most fun I have had when reading came from Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank). I am a huge Daniel Abraham fan and consider my writing heavy influenced by his. Leviathan is a solar-system-wide mystery with a great story, wonderful science, and great characters. The best nonfiction I’ve read this year would be the classic The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks; it is a brilliant, unabashedly erudite, and yet compassionate collection of neurological case narrations. The best young adult book I’ve read this year was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, which was hilarious, touching, and eye-opening.

Hands down, the book I am most anticipating is Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. I have read The Lies of Locke Lamora no less than four times and may do so again. In my opinion, Lynch is the king of wit and suspense. I’m eager to see where he takes the series next.

Order “Spellbound” HERE

Read An Excerpt HERE

Read FBC’s Review of “Spellwright”

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Blake Charlton overcame severe dyslexia in seventh grade when he began sneaking fantasy and science fiction books into special ed study hall. Inspired, he went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University. From here, Blake worked at numerous jobs—English teacher, biomedical technical writer, learning-disability tutor, etc.—while finishing his debut novel. He currently attends Stanford University School of Medicine as he writes The Spellwright Trilogy.

PLOT SUMMARY: In a world where one’s magical prowess is determined by one’s skill with words and ability to spell, Francesca DeVega is a gifted healer in the city of Avel, composing magical sentences that close wounds and disspell curses. Her life is suddenly thrown into chaos when a newly dead patient sits up and tells her that she must flee the infirmary or face a fate worse than death. Now Francesca is in the middle of a game she doesn’t understand—one that ties her to the notorious rogue wizard Nicodemus Weal and brings her face-to-face with demons, demigods, and a man she hoped never to see again.

Meanwhile, it has been ten years since Nicodemus Weal escaped the Starhaven Academy, where he was considered disabled and useless because of a disease that causes him to misspell magical texts. Ten years since he battled the demon Typhon who stole his birthright and murdered his friends. Unable to use the magical languages of his own people, Nico has honed his skills in the dark Chthonic languages, readying himself for his next encounter with the demon. But there are complications—his mentor suffers from an incurable curse, his half-sister’s agents are hunting him, and he’s still not sure what part Francesca DeVega will play. He certainly doesn’t know what to make of Francesca herself.

Now, as Nico tries to thwart the demon’s plan and save his friends, he realizes that if he makes one wrong move, he could end up destroying all mortal life...

CLASSIFICATION: The Spellwright Trilogy is epic fantasy in the vein of Brandon Sanderson, while also containing elements of Ken Scholes’ Psalms of Isaak series and Sean McMullen’s The Moonworlds Saga.

FORMAT/INFO: Spellbound is 416 pages long divided over a Prolog, fifty-two numbered chapters, and an Epilog. Also includes a map of the Six Human Kingdoms and the city of Avel. Narration is in the third-person via Nicodemus Weal, Francesca DeVega, Agwu Shannon’s ghost, Deirdre, Cyrus Alarcon, and Magistra Vivian Niyol. Spellbound is the second volume in The Spellwright Trilogy after Spellwright. Most of the book’s major plotlines are satisfactorily concluded, while the closing chapters and Epilog set up events for Spellbreaker (working title), the trilogy’s final volume.

September 13, 2011 marks the North American Hardcover publication of Spellbound via Tor. Cover art is provided by Todd Lockwood. The UK edition (see below) will be published on September 29, 2011 via Harper Voyager.

ROBERT’S ANALYSIS: Spellwright, Blake Charlton’s debut novel, was an impressive first offering thanks to a highly inventive magic system, charming accessibility, and the author’s obvious passion for the genre. At the same time, the book suffered from shallow characterization and world-building, a story driven by overly familiar fantasy tropes, and an Epilog that dragged on. In my opinion, the positive elements in Spellwright far outweighed the negative ones, leaving me personally excited about the sequel. That said, I had a few concerns about Spellbound. Specifically, would the sequel retain the elements that worked so well in Spellwright, while improving upon its weaknesses? And, could Spellbound avoid the middle book problems that plague so many trilogies? For the most part, the answer to these questions is yes...

By far, the most compelling aspect of Spellwright was the book’s unique magic system: “Imagine a world in which you could peel written words off a page and make them physically real. You might pick your teeth with a sentence fragment, protect yourself with defensive paragraphs, or thrust a sharply-worded sentence at an enemy’s throat.” Thankfully, this magic system with all of its wonderful rules, properties and prose—“a coruscation of pale sentence fragments”, “hemorrhaging language”, “linguistic concoction”, “a silvery plume of cutting prose”—is also the most compelling part of Spellbound, expanding on the ideas introduced in Spellwright, while introducing a couple of new ones. So in addition to Numinous, Magnus, Language Prime, the cthonic languages which only function in darkness, and Charlton’s unique version of dragons—“Dragons are not giant reptile pyromaniacs, but unbound incarnations of all things dangerous and partially incomprehensible who can alter the way people near them think.”—Spellbound also allows readers to experience the way magical language is used in medicine, in metal, by druids, and, best of all, by hierophants. Hierophants are spellwrights who use their heart muscle to produce language that moves within cloth and becomes wind when cast, introducing a whole new dimension to air travel, aerial combat and the application of cloth.

As fascinating as the magic system is, there’s a lot of information to process in Spellbound. Too much information if you also include cacography, quaternary cognition, aphasia, avatars, synesthesia, godspells, metaspells, ghostwriting, constructs, the Silent Blight, etc. Factor in all of the other details—world-building, characters, subplots—that readers have to process as well, and the inclusion of a glossary would have been tremendously helpful. Even necessary perhaps.

Compared to the magic system, world-building once again lacks depth, but there have been noticeable improvements. This is because Spellbound is set almost entirely in the city of Avel in the kingdom of Spires. By focusing on Avel, the author is able to accomplish more with what little world-building is present. Not only that, but Avel is quite different from the familiar academy setting found in Spellwright, and thus, much more interesting. Besides facing constants threats from lycanthropes, earthquakes and grassfires, Avel’s survival relies on its unique wind garden trade and citizens maintaining a devoted relationship with the deity Cala who controls the city’s dam/aquifer.

Unfortunately, while Blake Charlton’s world-building showed improvement in Spellbound, characterization remains a major weakness. Shallow character depth is part of the problem, but the bigger issues lie elsewhere. For one, Spellbound only features two POVs from Spellwright—Nicodemus and Deirdre—with the author failing to take full advantage of their thought-provoking situations. Namely, Deirdre forced to serve a demon that she hates with all her being while suffering the loss of her goddess Boann, and Nicodemus being unable to touch another human because of his cacography and ability to read Language Prime. Speaking of Nicodemus, the cacographic spellwright is not even the main attraction in Spellbound. Instead, Nico plays second fiddle to Francesca DeVega, a cleric/physician of Avel’s infirmary. Fortunately, Francesca is an interesting and engaging character because of her medical profession and playfully sarcastic personality—“Imagine having a brain so primitive that the image of something attractive could drive you to hurl yourself at that image. Oh, but I forget, you are male. You can sympathize.”—but I wish the author had focused more on Nicodemus.

Of the other new POVs—a textual copy of Agwu Shannon; Cyrus Alarcon, Air Warden of Avel; and Vivian Niyol, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Astrophell—Shannon’s ghost was the most fascinating despite little face time, while Cyrus was largely forgettable as he was the novel’s least interesting character. Vivian’s role in Spellbound is minor apart from a major revelation, but she will no doubt play a much larger role in the trilogy’s conclusion. Overall, Spellbound’s characters may be likable and charming, but they’re not much more than that, making it difficult to become emotionally attached to anyone. A shame considering Blake Charlton is unafraid of killing off his characters, which is evidenced by a few more deaths in Spellbound.

Story-wise, Spellbound is hit and miss. For almost the first one hundred pages, the sequel is nearly nonstop excitement and engrossing mystery. Sadly, the book is unable to maintain this exhilarating pace, becoming bogged down by world-building, overwhelming subplots—Deirdre’s scheming; the mystery behind Shannon’s ghost, Vivian’s hidden power and Francesca’s role; Spirish politics; the League of Starfall; the Savanna Walker; aphasia; the War of Disjunction; agents of the Halycon; et cetera—and tedious flirtation between Francesca, Cyrus and Nicodemus. Fortunately, Spellbound makes up for all of this with the last one hundred pages of the novel, which features wonderful twists and revelations, a thrilling showdown with the demon Typhon, and an Epilog that is much more satisfying than the one found in Spellwright. Between the Epilog, providing answers & closure to many of the novel’s most pressing questions, and a story set ten years after the major events of Spellwright, it’s obvious that Spellbound is not your typical middle volume . . . which is a good thing. Meanwhile, fantasy tropes are still present in Spellbound, but not nearly the hindrance they were in Spellwright.

ROBERT’S CONCLUSION: Apart from characterization, Blake Charlton’s Spellbound is a better novel than its predecessor, building on Spellwright’s charm and unique magic system, while demonstrating noticeable improvement in world-building, the usage of fantasy tropes, and starting/ending a book in style. At the same time, Spellbound manages to avoid many of the problems suffered by middle books of trilogies, delivering a middle volume that progresses The Spellwright Trilogy into new territory, while leaving readers satisfied with the book itself, but also invested in the trilogy’s conclusion. In short, Spellbound is highly recommended to fans of Spellwright and anyone who enjoys epic fantasy that is charming, imaginative and entertaining...

CINDY’S ANALYSIS: Spellwright was one of my favorite books of 2010. I'm not sure if it was because the book had a traditional fantasy feel without using the same old, same old storylines and magical systems, or it was just a book that I was instantly captivated by. Needless to say, having loved Spellwright so much, I couldn't wait for Spellbound.

Spellbound contains all the characters and dialogue that I loved about Spellwright, but with a bit of added maturity. Blake Charlton has really grown and matured as a writer, and he shows exactly why he should be considered one of fantasy's best up-and-coming authors. Readers are given a detailed look into political systems, the characters, and the magic system.

While Spellbound was very similar to Spellwright, there were a few things that came across to me as different. The first one was the pacing. Spellwright was very fast paced and I couldn't seem to put it down in the beginning, while it slowed down in the middle and then sped up at the end. Spellbound has the exact opposite effect. It seemed to start off slowish and pick up speed as the book went on. Charlton doesn't spend a lot of time on repeating facts, so I can't exactly pinpoint why it felt sluggish but it was certainly worth sticking to it and finishing the book.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Spellbound just as much, if not more than Spellwright. I felt it gave me a more in-depth look into the world that was created and despite the slow feeling in the beginning, eventually turned into a book that I couldn't put down until I finished.

Blake Charlton is definitely a force to be reckoned with in the fantasy world. These two amazing books are just proof that Charlton deserves to be listed as one of the top fantasy writers for 2011. With all its fast paced action, mystery and such a unique magical system, Spellbound earns a place as one of my top 2011 books, and I can't wait to see where Charlton takes readers next. Wherever that may be you can be sure I'm following along.

Order “The Night Circus” HERE (US) + HERE (UK)

Read An Excerpt HERE

Watch the Book Trailer HERE

AUTHOR INFORMATION: Erin Morgenstern studied theatre & studio art at Smith College. She is a writer and artist whose work is described as “fairy tales in one way or another.” The Night Circus is her first novel.

PLOT SUMMARY: The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, “the Circus of Dreams”, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead...

CLASSIFICATION: From a literature standpoint, The Night Circus reminded me of a cross between Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Christopher Priest’s The Prestige, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and Daniel Wallace’s Big Fish. At times however, The Night Circus feels more like a movie than a book, and in that regard I kept thinking of Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice In Wonderland) and Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch).

FORMAT/INFO: The Night Circus is 400 pages long divided over five titled Parts and chapters that are unnumbered, but titled and dated with the location included. Narration is in the third person—both limited and omniscient—via Celia Bowen, Marco Alisdair, the man in the grey suit, the Night Circus’ proprietor M. Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre, the clockmaker Herr Friedrick Thiessen; the Murray twins Widget & Poppet, the engineer Ethan Barris, the Burgess sisters Tara & Lainie, the fortune-teller Isobel, and the dreamer Bailey, etc. The book also features short interludes written in the second person. The Night Circus is a standalone novel.

September 13, 2011 marks the North American Hardcover publication of The Night Circus via Doubleday. The UK edition (see below) will be published on September 15, 2011 via Harvill Secker.

ROBERT’S ANALYSIS: It’s not every day that a book receives the kind of publicity that Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus has enjoyed. This includes a 175,000 first printing through its US publisher, foreign rights sold in over twenty countries, and a movie deal with Summit Entertainment (The Twilight Saga, RED, Astro Boy, The Hurt Locker) scored several months before publication. Then again, it’s not every day that a book like The Night Circus comes along.

Erin Morgenstern’s debut is a special novel, offering readers a magical, one-of-a-kind reading experience. An experience that may vary depending on the person. For instance, some readers might find themselves enchanted by the turn of the century setting—the novel takes place between February 1873 and January 1903—with an enigmatic circus serving as the main attraction. For others, it could be the story, a non-linear narrative that cleverly begins where the novel ends, with a competition between two magicians, a love story that challenges fate, and a dreamer faced with life-altering decisions contained in between. In some cases, the novel’s cast of charming and mysterious characters—Prospero the Enchanter and his daughter Celia Bowen; the man in the grey suit and his student Marco Alisdair; M. Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre, proprietor of the Night Circus; the clockmaker Herr Friedrick Thiessen and the rêveurs; the Murray twins Widget & Poppet; the engineer Ethan W. Barris; the Burgess sisters Tara & Lainie; the fortune-teller Isobel; Mme. Ana Padva, a retired ballerina; the contortionist Tsukiko; the dreamer Bailey—might be the culprit. For yet others, it could be Erin Morgenstern’s accomplished writing and elegant prose:

“Stories have changed my dear boy. There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act. Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with his prey.”

For me, it’s the sense of wonder I felt as I was reading The Night Circus. The same kind of feeling I had when I first read Alice In Wonderland or the Arabian Nights or Harry Potter. This sense of wonder is a combination of many factors including the author’s vivid imagination; a dreamlike ambiance that exists throughout the novel; characters who are full of magic, both real and symbolic like the Murray twins born at the very same time Le Cirque des Rêves first opened; and a story comprised of several mysterious subplots: the purpose of the contest, the relationship between the man in the grey suit and Hector Bowen, the bond between the Night Circus and its performers, how Bailey and the rêveurs fit in the picture, etc. Of course, of all the wonderful things that Erin Morgenstern manages to include in her novel—Midnight Dinners, a ship made of books sailing upon an ocean of ink—nothing is more captivating than the circus itself. With its black-and-white theme and astounding attractions—the Carousel, the Wishing Tree, the Labyrinth, the Stargazer, the Cloud Maze, Bedtime Stories, the Drawing Room, the Menagerie, the Ice Garden, the Hall of Mirrors, the Pool of Tears—the Night Circus is truly a “feast for the senses”:

“More than a carnival. More than a circus, really, like no circus anyone has ever seen. Not a single large tent but a multitude of tents, each with a particular exhibition. No elephants or clowns. No, something more refined than that. Nothing commonplace. This will be different, this will be an utterly unique experience, a feast for the senses. Theatrics sans theatre, an immersive entertainment. We will destroy the presumptions and preconceived notions of what a circus is and make it something else entirely, something new.”

“What it needs is style, panache. Ingenuity in its engineering and structure. To be infused with the mesmerizing, and perhaps a touch of mystery. Unusual yet beautiful. Provocative while remaining elegant.”

As amazing as The Night Circus is, especially for a debut, Erin Morgenstern’s novel is not perfect. For starters, characters lack depth and are unsympathetic because of the large cast and an omniscient/limited third-person narrative that prevents readers from becoming intimate with the novel’s characters. As a result, it’s hard to feel anything except indifference when a character dies, falls in love or is asked to make a difficult choice. At the same time, the story drags in certain places, while the novel’s climax and conclusion can feel a bit underwhelming.

Apart from these issues with the characterization and story, I have nothing but praise for Erin Morgenstern’s remarkable debut. Not only is The Night Circus one of the year’s best releases, ranking right up there with Félix J. Palma’s The Map of Time, it is a book that I highly recommend to anyone and everyone. After all, like attending an actual circus, The Night Circus is the kind of thing that every person should experience at least once in their lifetime...

LIVIU’S ANALYSIS: One of the more hyped novels I have heard of in recent times, The Night Circus came with very high expectations and I have to say that they were generally fulfilled and the hype mostly deserved, though there were several niggles I will talk about here too.

The Night Circus works magnificently at the prose level: lyrical, wonderful, descriptive, imaginative, the book is just a pleasure to read and imagine. The author writes superbly and the book never stops enchanting. If the style does not work for you, I doubt the book will work.

The storyline is not that complicated - there are some powerful magicians in existence, one disguising himself as a stage performer, another just being mysterious - and they have an ongoing rivalry for centuries now which they test once in a while when they each train a pupil and pit them in a strange contest involving magic and real life, contest that usually takes decades and ends with only one of the two pupils standing.

When the novel starts in 1873, Hector Bowen aka "Prospero the Magician" receives an unusual package from a "former fan" - his 5 year old daughter Celia, left in his care by his mother whom he had seduced and abandoned years ago; a bit annoyed, Hector - who like his mysterious opponent Alexander is not a very nice person, centuries of life and all - soon realizes that Celia has power too and he decides she will be the perfect tool to get back to Alexander whose pupil had won the last contest.

Alexander accepts and in turn collects Marco a 9 year old boy with the right personality/traits/etc from an orphanage and starts training him for the next 12 years or so.

And then in 1886 the contest starts in form of the Cirque de Reves, which Marco now the personal assistant/right hand of a wealthy eccentric patron of arts "builds" - it's more complicated than that but that's the idea - and Celia who is hired as illusionist, actually enhances and sustains with her magic while embedding it in reality.

In the process we meet a great number of characters, most of them quite fascinating, we visit a lot of places though usually the Cirque takes precedence to the locale and the novel twists and turns a few times too. The tension ratchets slowly but it reaches quite a high level and the ending is excellent though it is somewhat telegraphed earlier - I clearly saw it from a long way back as the main possibility of "solving" the contest.

Now the niggles mentioned: since the main characters get progressively stronger and become more than human in many ways, the author's decision to keep them at an emotional remove from us and introduce a lot of supporting characters, some who take the center stage later, is warranted but it also lessens a little the book which at some point becomes "competing gods" and the puny mortals involved.

The main romance is both telegraphed and not that interesting and while again it was most likely needed for the structure and resolution of the book, I wish the author would have made other choices within the framework of her novel.

Marco and Celia start very interesting but become less so as their power increases though there is balance with the supporting characters who become more important. The real life grounding - while talked a lot about and in a way being the main point of the contest - starts strong, but then as the quantity of magic involved increases considerably, the grounding gets shakier.

All in all the prose, descriptions and supporting characters make The Night Circus a strong book and an A+ for me, but I wish the author would have made some other choices as the novel progressed, keeping the story and the circus mysterious to the end since that way I think the novel could have been a masterpiece.