Book Review – Drosselmeyer – Curse of the Rat King by Paul Thompson

This is really a great premise for a book. Taking a world that can be built upon with the backdrop of The Nutcracker, Thompson establishes the magic system and magicians of that world. This being the first book of the trilogy, you can find characters that will pop up in the main story.

What Thompson does is takes the tropes of magic training and gives them weight. Magic is a product of one’s energy that can be completed, runes and drawing shapes focuses the magic use, and each magician has their own genre-focus with our main character being under the tutelage of a mage of time. On top of that, Thompson has written characters to care about. Our main character Frtiz/Ddrosselmeyer is not “the chosen one” but is special and he’s also kind and focused on doing the right thing. The other magicians in training and people worth caring about and trying to solve the mystery of who is trying to take them out matters to the reader for all of them.

The quality of writing is very well done. Building characters, adding tension, revealing clues and resolving them, and adding hints along the way shows the talent of Thompson as an author and the care he has for the world he is populating. This would be a hit for teenage boys and those who don’t need 10, 2,000 page book series to enjoy a good fantasy novel. I’m excited to read the next two!