April09_5
Just filling in time with this one, a perfectly amiable and engaging fantasy about a newly trained wizard caught up in royal shenanigans, 'The Accidental Sorcerer' by K E Mills. The conceit is that wizarding is a straightforward profession aquired via correspondence course. Gerald Dunwoody (Wizard, Third Class) is unhappily employed as a probationary compliance offer, Department of Thaumaturgy, with wizarding yet to meet his expectations. He stumbles on a nasty incident in a Staff factory, sorts it out, blows everything up and so discovers greater powers within himself that anyone suspected, etc. The blurb calls it "Harry Potter for grown ups", which is about right. NEXUS declared it "unputdownable", which was very kind.