Series: Inheritance of Magic
(#1)
Format: Paperback, 384 pages
Release Date: October 10, 2023
Publisher: Ace
Source: Publisher
Genre: Fantasy / ContemporaryThe 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.
An Inheritance of Magic, by Benedict Jacka, is the first installment in the authors Inheritance of Magic series. Location: London, England. Key Character: 20-year-old Stephen Oakwood and his cat Hobbes. This book is set to the back drop where anyone can do magic (drucraft) as long as they have the money. 3 years ago, Stephen's father disappeared with only a note telling him to stay away, and don't look for him. He's been watching for the black vans ever since to come back for him.
His mother he never got to know. Stephen 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 named Hobbes who is a better companion than most of us friends. After a chance encounter with a member of House
Ashford (Lucella) gets him noticed by the wrong people, Stephen is thrown in the
deep end. After he escapes using curious new tactics that stun his pursuers, Stephen knows that he needs to have his head on a swivel.
It seems as though there is a battle to see who will be named heir of House Ashford, and it seems that he is a cousin of Lucella, and apparently, he discovers that he is somehow connected to the House and the patriarch of the House. 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.
While his missing father taught him the basics of drucraft, Stephen finds that he is unique in his ability. In fact, his talents make him a valuable asset if anyone took the time to actually discover who he really is. Stephen has had only one
teacher and little to no training but he does find help from a priest, and a woman who works for a powerful corporation. Which means that over his relatively
short life, he’s learned to do things that organized training would
have told him were impossible. And maybe they mostly are, but for him,
some of them are not. This is why so many people want him out of the way. Like Lucella.
Stephen embodies the classic underdog archetype. He has
to outsmart enemies that are wealthier, stronger, and more influential
than him but at the same time, learn how to make himself stronger so that he can survive any challenges that are to come. Including the stunning ending to this book which will likely continue to the sequel. Stephen's connection to Hobbes is adorable, as is there conversations. Even when Hobbes is left for dead, Stephen refuses to abandon is only real family member remaining.
Finally, I do have the sequel to this novel, and I will definitely be reading it in October to see what happens as Stephen tries to find his way in a world that seems to look down on people like him.
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Chapter 1
There was a strange car at the end of my road.
I'd only leant out of my window for a quick look around, but as I saw
the car I paused. All around me were the sounds and smells of the London
morning: fresh air that still carried the chill of the fading winter,
the dampness of last night's rain, birdsong from the rooftops and the
trees. Pale grey clouds covered the sky, promising more showers to come.
Everything was normal . . . except for the car.
Spring had come
early this year, and the cherry tree outside my window had been in
bloom long enough for its flowers to turn from white to pink and begin
to fall. The car was just visible through the petals, parked at the end
of Foxden Road at an angle that gave it a clear line of sight to my
front door. It was sleek and ominous, shiny black with tinted windows,
and it looked like a minivan. Nobody on our street owns a minivan,
especially not one with tinted windows.
A loud "Mraooow" came from my feet.
I looked down to see a grey-and-black tabby cat watching me with
yellow-green eyes. "Oh, fine, Hobbes," I told him, and shifted. Hobbes
sprang up onto the sill, rubbed his head against my shoulder until I
gave him a scratch, then jumped down onto the ledge that ran along the
front of the building. I gave the car a last sidelong glance, then
withdrew and shut the window.
I cleaned my teeth, dressed and had breakfast, and all the time I kept thinking about that car.
Almost three years ago, the day after my dad disappeared, a white Ford
started showing up on our road. I might not have noticed it, but a
couple of the things my dad had said in that hastily scribbled letter
had made me suspicious, and once I started paying attention I noticed
that same Ford, with the same number plate, in other places. Near my
boxing gym, near my work . . . everywhere.
It kept on for more
than a year. I was worrying about my dad and struggling to manage work
and rent, and while all that was going on, I'd kept seeing that car.
Even after I got evicted and had to move in with my aunt, all the way up
in Tottenham, I'd still seen it. I started to hate that car after a
while-it became a symbol of everything that had gone wrong-and it was
only my dad's warning that stopped me from marching out to confront
whoever was inside. Sometimes it would vanish for a few days, but it'd
always come back.
But eventually the gaps became longer and
longer, and finally it didn't come back at all. When I moved out of my
aunt's and here to Foxden Road, one of the first things I did was write
down the description and number plate of every car on the street, then
check back for the next couple of weeks to see who'd get into them. But
every car on the road belonged to someone who lived there, and finally I
came to accept that whoever it had been, they were gone. That had been
six months ago, and ever since then, there'd been nothing to make me
think they'd come back.
Until now.
I filled
Hobbes’s water bowl, and then it was time to go to work. I zipped up my
fleece and stepped outside, closing the door behind me. The black
minivan was still there. I walked away up the road without looking back,
then turned the corner.
As soon as I was out of the minivan's
line of sight, I stopped. I could make out its blurry reflection in the
ground-floor windows on our street, and I waited to see if it would
start moving.
One minute passed, then two. The reflection didn't move.
If they were following me, they should have driven off by now.
Maybe I was being overly suspicious. After all, the men from two years
ago had always used the same car, and it hadn't been this one. I turned
and set off for the station. I kept glancing over my shoulder as I
walked along Plaistow Road, watching for the minivan's black shape in
the busy A-road traffic, but it didn't appear.
My name is
Stephen Oakwood, and I’m twenty years old. I was raised by my dad, grew
up and went to school here in Plaistow, and apart from one big secret
that I’ll get to later, I used to have a pretty normal life. That all
changed a few months before my eighteenth birthday, when my dad
disappeared.
The next few years were rough. Living alone in
London is hard unless you have a lot going for you, which I didn't. To
begin with, my plan was to wait for my father to come back, and maybe
even go and look for him, but I quickly found out that just making
enough money to live on was so all-consuming that it didn't leave me
time for much else. For the first year or so, I was able to get a job
with an old friend of my dad's who ran a bar, but when the bar closed,
my money ran out. I got evicted and had to move in with my aunt.
Living with my aunt and uncle let me get back on my feet, but it was
clear from the beginning that there was a definite limit as to how long
they were willing to put me up. I couldn't afford a flat, but I could
just about afford a room in Plaistow, so long as I worked full-time. And
so after a stint at a call centre (bad) and a job at a different bar
(worse), I found my way last winter to a temp agency that hired office
workers for the Civil Service. Which was why, that morning, I took the
District Line to Embankment and walked south along the Thames to the
Ministry of Defence.
Saying I work at the Ministry of Defence
makes my job sound more exciting than it really is. My actual title is
Temporary Administrative Assistant, Records Office, Defence Business
Services, and my job mostly consists of fetching records from the
basement. One wall of the Records Office is taken up by a machine called
the Lektriever, a sort of giant vertical conveyor belt carrying shelves
of box files up from the level below. The basement is huge, a cold dark
cavern with endless rows of metal shelves holding thousands and
thousands of files. Every day, orders come down to change the files, at
which point someone has to go down, put new files in, and take the old
files out. That someone is me. In theory the position's supposed to be
filled by a permanent staff member, but since being an admin in Records
is pretty much the least desirable position in the entire MoD, no-one's
willing to take the job, so they hire temps instead. For this, I get
paid £10.70 an hour.
I've been spending a bit less time in the
basement lately, due to Pamela. Pamela's title is Senior Executive
Officer, a midlevel Civil Service rank that puts her well above everyone
in Records. She's in her forties, dresses in neat business suits, and
as of the last week or two she seems to have taken an interest in me.
Today Pamela found me after lunch and put me to work sorting
applications. It was a long job, and by the time I was done, it was
nearly four o'clock. When I finally finished, instead of sending me back
to Records, Pamela tapped the papers on her desk to straighten them,
laid them down beside her keyboard, then turned her swivel chair to face
me. "You started here in December?"
Pamela was giving me a considering sort of look that made me wary. I nodded.
"You said you were thinking about applying to university," Pamela said. "Did you?"
"No," I admitted.
"Why not?"
I didn't answer.
"It's no good just ignoring these things. You've missed the UCAS deadline, but you could still get into Clearing."
"Okay."
"Don't just say okay," Pamela told me. "That Records Office post won't
stay vacant forever. If you do a three-year course and reapply, you
could come in at the same role in a permanent position."
I tried
to figure out how to answer that, but Pamela had already turned back to
her computer. "That's all for today. I'll have another job for you on
Friday."
I rode the District Line home.
As I stood
on the swaying train, the conversation with Pamela kept going around in
my head. It was the second time she'd suggested a permanent position,
and the second time I'd avoided giving her an answer. Part of me wanted
to be honest and tell Pamela that I didn't want a future in the Records
Office. But if I said that, Pamela would either fire me or ask So what
are you going to do instead? and the only answer I had for that question
was one I couldn't tell her.
The sad part was that by the
standards of my other jobs, the Civil Service wasn't even all that bad.
While I'd been living with my aunt, I'd been working at the call centre
where I'd spent eight hours a day selling car insurance renewals. You
know how when you ring up a company to cancel your service, you get put
through to someone who tries to persuade you not to? Yeah, that was me. I
say "persuade," but all you actually do is follow a script, and if
you've never worked that kind of job, there's no way you can possibly
understand just how mind-shatteringly boring it is. You pick up the
phone and recite your lines, then you put the phone back down, and you
do that over and over and over again, every single day. Compared to
that, the Records Office was easy. At least box files don't yell at you
for leaving them on hold.
But while the Civil Service wasn't
that bad, it also wasn't good. The hours were steady and the pay was
enough to live on, but it was meaningless and dull and I spent every day
counting the hours until I could go home.
I stared at the ads
on the train. In between posters for vitamin supplements ("Tired Of
Feeling Tired?") and for loan companies ("Discover Your Credit Score
Today!") was one for a London university. "DO SOMETHING YOU LOVE" was
written in big white letters, above a photo of three ethnically diverse
students staring out at the horizon with blissful expressions. At the
bottom right of the ad was a paragraph of small print titled "Funding."
I got off at Plaistow and went to the pub.
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