I didn’t want the book to end and it took me 4 days to complete reading this 350-page book. I am usually a slow reader but a good book, now and then, can have me reading 300 pages a day. This was that and I paced myself to better savor the read.

Hello and welcom (back?) to another book review. The ARC was provided by published via NetGalley and I’m extremely grateful for having the opportunity to foray into this new world that author Jeff Wheeler created with The Invisible College (book one). I don’t do spoiler-free reviews (what are they anyway) so consider yourself warned that this review contains spoilers.

The deal with trying to immerse yourself into a new fantasy world is the various characters, the very new world and its magic system. But despite having unique characters, intricate world-building and an interestingly unfamiliar magic system, this book doesn’t leave you reeling with information or names (characters and places). You are very much along for the journey. For this reason, the plot is not super-fast. But I found the paced suited for the story.

The story is set in Victorian-esque London-esque world with its manners and societal expectations. Magic is imbued in technology in a seamless manner where trains are operated by sorcerers aided by magicked tracks and so are trams. Now, this magic is supposedly stolen from Aesirs who sleep in their frosty homes deep in the mountains that is inaccessible to mortals. The human world has countries (though we don’t hear about other countries) and cities (there is a lot of intercity travels throughout the book). There is a King, who is not held in high regard by the populace. There is a military which employs sorcerers to fight against the Aesir. And there is a college, The Invisible College, which has universities and quorums under it.

A sorcerer rises through the ranks of The Invisible College and acsends the various levels that exist to unlock more power and influence and become privy to secrets that are being kept from the citizens for their safety and security.

We get the story from three POV-characters as the Aesir are rising again against the mortals, The Awakening, and they promise more that destruction, they bring diseases that harm the mortals’ ability to hear or more newly, speak. Robinson, the male protagonist, has lost his brothers to an illness that had left him with frequent headaches and coughs. McKenna, the female protagonist, has been rendered deaf in another illness and in the course of the book, another new illness hits the masses as a result of The Awakening that started with fever and cough and closed up the throat to impede speech and eventually make breathing impossible.

Why these kinds of disease? The sorcerers magic is cast through their voices in this world. Music through instruments is another source of spell-casting as well. McKenna, born to influential parents, has hopes of becoming a sorcerer herself but her being deaf is an insurmountable challege until Robinson arrives in town. McKenna’s parents have helped found a school for deaf which teaches them sign languages and helps them perfect lip-reading. But most deaf people get thrown in asylum and this school for the deaf is a beacon of hope in their lives. Robinson’s father has invented this method of speech that relies more on the physiology of pronunciation to communicate the sounds instead of learning the alphabets of the language (I’m reducing the process a lot here) and this is valuable knowledge for the deaf. McKenna who has an affinity for languages is hopeful to not let her deafness limit her opportunities. From entering Society to actually becoming a sorcerer, she hopes for it all. So Robinson teaches at the university, at the school for the deaf and gives private lessons to McKenna.

If you’re thinking of My Fair Lady (Pygmalion), the author doesn’t shy away from mentioning the plot in context of their world (which I found to be very honest) – Robinson’s father had supposedly improved the speech of a flower-seller who made her own living now and had improved her station in life in general.

The third POV character is who we begin the novel with. Joseph is an officer in the military, a member of the Invisible College and part of an elite group on a secret mission. He is actually a trigger-happy assassin and he gets a list of suspects who are colluding with the Aesir and Robinson is on it. These people are known as Semblances, mortals who were dead or dying and their bodies have been taken over by Aesir intelligence. I won’t go into the world-building and explain the magic system but it is nothing like I have read about before. This knowledge of magic is passed down from the Aesir and some ancient skirmish had led to their anger and resultant attacks every 1000 years or so.

Joseph has been hunting down Semblances but identifying them is impossible as long as they are alive, so he doesn’t know for certain if he is killing an innocent mortal or an enemy in a human’s skin until they are dead. This makes his work difficult but he is on the opinion that a few mortal lives do not really matter in the bigger picture. As he pursues Robinson through the cities, Robinson has actually fallen for McKenna and following her around while balancing his illustrious career, war efforts and inventions.

In a mad dash of a who catches up to who first, the latter part of the novel picks up pace. There is a lot happening, Semblances being revealed, murders, mysterious illnesses and new findings that can change the course of the war against the Aesir.

As the first book of the series, this one sets the stage aptly for the rest of the books in the pipeline and leaves you wanting for more. My one complain would be one dimensional female characters. Most of them had just one trait, one objective and one kind of mood throughout the book. While I understand the importance of character archetypes for the necessity of the plot, the female characters felt flat to me – McKenna’s mother, aunt and sisters were jarring among the other supporting characters.

This is still a solid 4/5 for me because of the deft world-building and very unique magic system that combined a kind of essence magic with spell-casting and science. I will be looking forward to reading more about this world and the fate of the two protagonists.