The Golden Age of Magic

Arrrrrgh, ya got me, Kindle First Reads! Kids, learn from my mistake: sometimes “no book” is a much better choice than “free book.” This is absolutely one of those times. I’ll keep this brief because as bad as The Golden Age of Magic is, pointing out every shortcoming in detail would still feel unnecessarily cruel. 

In fact, let’s start with something positive: the premise is appealing! Celeste, a fairy godmother trying to earn her wings, decamps from 1920’s Paris and strikes out for the bright lights of Hollywood. A new kind of royalty is being minted there, and Tinseltown is overflowing with glitz, glamour, and young starlets dreaming of fame and fortune. Unfettered by the traditions of the Old World, Celeste has a chance to both make her own mark and usher the Fées Gardiennes into a sparkling new era.  

I didn’t have lofty expectations for this but it sounded like it might be a nice cozy fantasy read, something lighthearted, like Encanto meets A Star is Born. Unfortunately, it fails on pretty much every possible level. The biggest letdown by far is the writing itself. The prose is uniformly wooden and workmanlike – just one clipped sentence after another of plain, functional descriptions without any nuance, subtext, or really any variation at all in tone. It’s like reading a small town newspaper article, or – at best – a Nancy Drew mystery. 

“Source of light, burning bright, infuse your glow, let energy flow. Channel the force, steady the course, feminine divine, power be mine.”

Shimmer & Shine, Genies Divine Celeste, from The Golden Age of Magic

Compared to that, the lack of worldbuilding feels almost like a footnote. Fairy godmother magic casually does whatever feels neat in the moment… but will just sit idle if the author’s first instinct is to take the plot in another direction. So: checking into the Beverly Hills Hotel, but there’s no vacancy? Celeste can raise an eyebrow and create a new, entirely furnished bungalow on the grounds while making the key appear on a hook behind the hotel clerk. She needs to get into a locked studio lot? Her lipstick tube becomes a skeleton key, and voila. But when she needs to get into a locked house and take a look around? Now she creates a distraction at work so her pet stoat can swipe the girl’s housekeys unnoticed. Why not use the skeleton key? Because then we couldn’t read the whimsical aside that follows: ever lose something only to have it turn up later in a place you swear you already looked? Classic fairy godmother move!!

This is just scratching the surface; there are so many other disappointments we could get into. There are half-written story arcs left hanging; plot holes and inconsistencies galore; no evocative or immersive period details (despite all the amazing low-hanging fruit!); shallow, disposable characters; etc. But does it honestly avail anyone to see every single one of those peeled apart and dissected here? Maybe there’s a sort of ghoulish fascination factor to it, but someone spent months of their life putting pen to paper and getting this published. Dunking on it more at this point would just feel mean-spirited. Suffice it to say The Golden Age of Magic is not a well-written work, and there’s no reason to endure it if you don’t have to.