Should knowledge be hoarded by librarians and sentient plants?
A Story of Spellbooks, Cinnamon Buns, Plants, and Merhorses.
Tags: #Spellshop #books #SarahBethDurst #magic #fantasy #plants #review
As a low stakes, more upbeat, easy read, the Spellshop is a cozy novel by Sarah Beth Durst. An introverted, antisocial librarian, Kiela, quickly leaves all the drama (aka a revolution that culminates in the burning of a library and the defenestration of the emperor) behind and sails to her hometown on an isolated island to focus on protecting books and cooking jam. As the story progresses, she learns about making friends and creating illegal magic to help the locals, as the imperial sorcerers no longer travel to the countryside. Is this all a metaphor for the bourgeoisie neglecting the proletariat? Possibly, but the good thing about cozy novels is you don’t have to care about deeper meaning or thematic overtones. You can just have a librarian make jams with her talking spider plant, Caz, and flirt with the local merhorse herder, Larran.
There is some slight drama when the last member of the royal family washes ashore and impersonates an imperial inspector. But through the power of friendship they clear the air (literally and metaphorically) just in time for the real imperial army to show up, and quickly get turned away with some bad acting and a well placed lie. Low stakes means everyone on the island thrives.
The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst
There are upsides to the cozy novel. The lack of serious drama allows for more room to explore the magic and research that Kiela and Caz do throughout the novel. There is a lot of experimentation with plant growing and how to live your best cottagecore life. There are jam recipes and mystical creatures like mermaids, merhorses, and cloud bears. We don’t really deal with how the magical system works, but we don’t need to. Kiela and Caz read up in their spellbooks, collect ingredients, and sometimes accidentally make a sentient cactus. It’s all light and fluffy.
The cozy vibes are perfect for lazy days, in comfortable chairs with fuzzy blankets. The story doesn’t require a lot of brainpower or emotional commitment. It’s not a difficult book in any way. This book removes even the low stress levels you can find in cozy mysteries. There’s no murder. It’s a nice jaunt into a fantasy island vacation.
The characters do not seem to be driven by corporate greed and instead rely on bartering. Good choice. Can recommend. Reading between the lines you can imply a whole lot of awful things about the empire as a whole, but stuck on the outskirts, on a remote, forgotten island, it doesn’t seem to touch the lives of Kiela and her new friends.
This is not a book for those looking for a challenge. This is a book for a flight, or a long wait at the mechanics, or when you’re stuck in a cabin and it’s the only available book. It’s easy to put down and pick back up.
While easy to read, the characters are rather one-dimensional. Nobody is particularly likeable, but nobody is particularly unlikeable either. Everyone’s just kinda there and that’s okay. Perhaps the only fleshed out entity was the sentient spider plant. Occasionally, when the plot called for more depth, a character would develop a tragic backstory. These never became integral to the unfolding action; it was unnecessary.
In an attempt to keep to the idea of generic plotline standards, there is some ramp up of action in the second half. The fake imperial investigator arrives on the island and Kiela worries how to conceal her spellbooks. The imperial warship arrives, looking for the last imperial princess, and a severe magic storm hits soon after. All three of these events happen in rapid succession. The plot doesn’t need all three to work. The warship in particular does not make much sense as they quickly leave the island and offer no great news from the capital regarding the revolution taking place in the background.
The book made a promising start for a cozy novel but the forced plots made for a clunky read. The last third of the book was a set of convoluted plots which felt forced and underdeveloped. There was no space to genuinely provide reasoning behind the ‘villains’ (used very loosely here) motive. When the vibes are intended to be cozy, less is sometimes more; less ‘twists’ more jam making, plant potting, magical creature petting, and pinecone coven.
Kiela spends the majority of her time reliving social interactions that happened on the page. She is depicted as a major introvert and lacking in social etiquette after years of self-isolation in the Grand Library, and her nerves and fumblings when speaking with other characters in the beginning of the story are fitting. As a reader, though, we do not need to revisit every interaction a second or third time as the main character frets over her past actions, at least not if it does not add something to her current situation. Often, it detracted from the magic elements of the story. Showing is better than telling and showing and then telling is repetitive.
From our research, it is a little unclear who this book was supposed to be marketed towards. It seemingly is categorized as a romantic fantasy novel. While it had romantic and fantasy elements, intellectually the book may be better suited as YA. There is no clear reason why it is not, but potentially the author was trying to avoid the YA label, as it can skew audience perception.
Was this the worst book we’ve read? Not by a long shot. It’s a cute, quick read. It’s probably best suited for a vacation. There is a sequel coming in the next few months that promises to be equally cozy and magical (and possibly doing a rinse-and-repeat on the plot). Hopefully, there will be more magic and less internal reflection, but since the main character was trapped in a tree for several years, the social anxiety will most likely return as a key characteristic. We will check it out eventually, but there is no Daughters’ Stamp Of Approval yet.