Spotlight: A Conjuring of Ravens by Azalea Ellis
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A Practical Guide to Sorcery Book 1
Genre: Epic Fantasy
In a world where magic is a science, Siobhan is a genius.
But even geniuses need schooling.
When Siobhan stumbled into the theft of a priceless magical book, she thought her dreams of becoming the world's most powerful sorcerer were destroyed.
But then a mysterious spell changed her life forever...
Siobhan is now wearing the body of a strange man and has a new identity—Sebastien. With a new chance for a new start, she allies herself with a local gang—secretly a revolutionary party funding itself through crime. Now, she is bound by vow to repay them in magic and favors.
But as Sebastien's reputation begins to bloom, and Siobhan's old enemies still lurk in the shadows, she quickly realizes that the secrets of this world are deeper and darker than she ever could have imagined.
Forced to juggle the two sides of her double life, Siobhan is determined to uncover the truth and take control of the name they gave her—The Raven Queen.
A Conjuring of Ravens is the first book in a hard fantasy series that includes: an intelligent protagonist, a rules-based magic system, and some hilarious misunderstandings.
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Excerpt
magical theory, desperation
I can’t let something this trivial stop me,’ she thought, glaring at the wood-bordered glass panes. ‘I need my grimoire.’
She made sure her feet were stable, then released one hand’s death grip on the windowsill. Her cold, clumsy fingers fumbled in one of the pockets of the ratty jacket she wore under the even more ratty cloak. She pulled out a soft wax crayon and carefully drew a small Circle on the glass, completely enclosing one of the hand-sized panes.
That was where the magic would take effect.
There could be no gaps in the Circle. Mistakes could be deadly.
Though she shook with the effort, Siobhan slowly drew a larger Circle around the first, dragging the crayon over the wooden divisions between the panes with careful precision. That was where she would write the Word, the instructions that would help guide the magic to the right purpose.
She drew a third, small Circle on the windowsill itself, then connected it to the outer Circle on the glass with a line. That was a component Circle, where she would place the Sacrifice, which would be consumed as she cast the spell.
She wrote the glyph for “fire” within it, though she would sacrifice no actual fire. It was close enough to the idea of heat to work. More fumbles into her many pockets turned up a vial of honey, of which she tipped a sluggish drop into the component Circle on the windowsill. Next, a small, rolled-up ball of similar stickiness—spiderweb. She reached for a wad of cotton, but found she had none.
Biting back a curse, she reached again for the wax crayon and wrote the glyph for “silence” in the space between the two overlapping Circles on the glass. She didn’t know the glyph for “stillness,” but she did know “slow,” so that’s what she wrote. She squeezed in what further detailed instructions would fit, but it wasn’t much. Finally, Siobhan drew a pentagon within the inside Circle.
She made the mistake of looking at the ground below and had to swallow down her lurching stomach and steady her trembling legs.
Magic required concentration. She couldn’t allow her circumstances to dull her wits if she wanted to succeed. ‘Grandfather didn’t teach me to be the type of sorcerer who has performance problems,’ she thought, sneering at her faint reflection in the glass.
‘He also didn’t teach me to make up spells out of desperation…’ This thought popped into her head unbidden, and she pushed it away. Untested spells were always dangerous.
It was always safer to copy a spell you already knew to work, which, ideally, had been proven over generations of regular use, than to try something entirely new.
If the magic rebelled and she lost control, she might die.
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About the Author
I’m the type of person that often has a wacky, shocking, or silly–but totally true–story to tell about my life.
The early part of my childhood was spent on a small farmstead, and I’ve got an active imagination that tends toward the outrageous and the macabre, which led to me being voted “most likely to borrow someone else’s car to transport a dead body.”
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