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The Wrong Familiar, by Megan Derr (Carnival of Mysteries series)
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Review By Ulysses Dietz, Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
Name of Book: The Wrong Familiar
Series: Carnival of Mysteries
Author: Megan Derr
Publisher: the author
Release date: summer 2024
Page Count: 200
Genre: m/m paranormal
It’s a wonderful story, very well written. A young earth mage is sent off at the age of five to a private magical academy to get him away from a scene of death and disaster. Twenty years later, at the moment when his hard work is about to pay off, betrayal and tragedy leave him with a raven for a familiar—a completely inappropriate sort of creature for an earth mage.
So Ninos and the raven, named Sinn, head off on a quest into the forbidding mountain country of Darkfell to seek out blood mages, in the hopes that they will be able to correct the error and find appropriate matches for both the young mage and his wrong familiar.
Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. Not only is Sinn helpful and amusing—if mischievous—but he listens to Ninos, whose whole world has been shaken to the core, along with his ability to trust others.
Interestingly, the Carnival of Mysteries has a very small, but critical, role in this book. Oddly, it is never referred to by name, but only as “the circus.”
Ninos and Sinn are the main focus of this story, and their characters are appealing and vivid. Clearly Sinn knows things about Ninos, and seems to understand his reluctant human better almost than Ninos knows himself. Ninos is a profoundly good person, but unaware of why that might be significant. Bereft of meaningful relationships, more or less given away by his family (even if it was to save him), Ninos needs Sinn to better understand himself.
As in every chapter of the Carnival of Mysteries series, the Carnival is found where it needs to be at the right moment. But the magic of the carnival can only do so much; it is up to Ninos and Sinn to take what the carnival gives them and choose the right path.
A compelling, amusing, and often touching story about the shape of magic in the world