Antonia is a wizard’s apprentice, but she isn’t very good at magic. One night when she is practicing magic, the new kitchen maid finds her. It turns out that she can do the spell better than Antonia. The kitchen maid, Moppe, becomes the next apprentice because her magic abilities are so strong. Then, the wizard they work with is accused with treason, leaving Antonia and Moppe to run away and look for evidence to prove their master’s innocence. They end up on a journey through the island to find the crown that belongs to the rightful leader.

This story had all the elements of a great children’s fantasy novel. There were magical creatures, such as a talking ferret who was sent to spy on their wizard master. There were dancing turnips, enchanted mermaids, and a nightmare forest. There were also betrayals and deception.

The magical world is controlled by words. The wizards learn words that give them different spell abilities. There are thousands of different words to create spells. That means that they can’t do a spell until they have learned how to say the word for it. This is a problem for Moppe who cannot read. It gave her a unique challenge that she had to find a way to overcome. Since I love words, this was a fascinating world to me.

This was a really good fantasy story!

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I'm pretty sure devoured is the word most people would use to describe how fast and into this book I got. There was action, adventure, and oddly enough some really good political intrigue for a book of this age range. Anyone who says you have to dumb down or make a simple magic system just because it's a kids book needs to read this immediately, everything made sense and wasn't overly complex for the sake of it, but held real power. There were so many good things about the story here, that I'm a little disappointed at some of the minor predictable parts, but that's just because I really wanted Antonia's brother to actually be alive.

The characters were so good, and none of the "villains" actually had that overly caricaturist feeling to them. I could believe they were actual people rather than just villains for a story, motives actually making sense based on their background and context. The main characters were so cute, too! I loved Antonia and Moppe, and their journey towards working together was so pure and fantastic.

One I'm definitely going to recommend, I blasted through it in an afternoon and it works as a standalone or the start of a series maybe? Hopefully?

ARC Copy...I did like that yes the narrative contain magic of the solid world building kind revolving around speech and one's ability with speech with a turnips on the side but the narrative is about rivalries.envy between friends but also within the political landscape of the world.