Secret of the Sixth Magic (1984 original; edició 1984)

I pulled this off of my "Someday" shelf last Thursday looking for the light fantasy that was Hardy's Master of Five Magics. Bit of a back story, I found the third book in the meta series eight years ago in a flea market. I liked Hardy's imaginative constructs in Five Magics, so I went hunting this one. I couldn't get into it, so set it aside, only to lose it (and 5,800 other books) to a fire in 2013. I found Riddle of the Seven Realms again, found this one again, and put them on that Someday shelf.

So...where Master of Five Magics was clever, this is an M. Knight Shyamalan sequel... except worse. Word salad neologistic magic-speak with new (attempts at clever again) concepts thrown out with no preamble, no explanation, and no resolution. Add shallow characters and shallower plot, and this is a mess.I don't know if #3 is any better, but it'll be a little while before I find out. ( )

This is the sequel to Master of the five magics. It has a new protagonist and is set in another part of the same world. The main character of the previous book makes a cameo appearance.

I found it frustrating to read. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on, but the protagonist keeps ignoring it in order to ineffectually pursue his own career. Several times his nose is rubbed into the fact that he saw something really weird, and then he starts thinking about it but then he's interrupted and just forgets about it again. I suppose it's a form of tension-building, or simply a plot device for keeping the protagonist (who is allegedly a keen puzzle-solver) from solving the mystery too early, but it didn't work for me.

The main appeal of the previous book, namely the careful revelation of new systems of magic, didn't work well here. Partly because of aforementioned problem, and partly because of inconsistencies—the "sixth magic" didn't actually work as described, with some rules driving the plot in one chapter and then being ignored in another.

There was some interesting scenery and world-building, though.

I'm disappointed but I'll still give the next book (Riddle of the seven realms) a chance. ( )