Joseph McCauley has always been in the wrong places at the wrong times. He’s been expelled from over fifteen different schools due to “accidents.” Are the accidents caused by the fact that he’s a wizard? In The Wizard Heir, by Cinda Williams Chima, Seph is a young wizard who has received little training from his grandmother Genevieve who, along with his parents, died when he was very young. His magic turns against him one night at a local club where he burns down the building, unintentionally killing his friend Maia. Seph is about to loose all hope of finding a teacher when a brochure for the school name The Heavens mysteriously comes into the possession of his legal guardian.
Upon arriving in Maine, The headmaster Dr. Leicester personally comes to retrieve Seph from the airport. Curiously enough, the school is a correctional facility for misunderstood or troubled young man and the campus is blocked from any contact outside the vast stone wall. Leicester also happens to be a wizard, and his therapy treatments of sending horrid nightmares into the dreams of the students are either effective or the therapy drives the victim crazy. Leicester and his band of followers, who are also wizards and known to the students as The Alumni, are supposedly trying to link the wizard houses. Sensing Seph’s incredible power, Leicester tries to link Seph’s power with his own and The Alumni, but Seph turns the offer down after an alumnus named Peter warns him not to accept. Leicester, furious, begins his therapy treatments on Seph and pushes him close to the edge of insanity.
Just when all hope seems lost and Seph is about to accept the offer, he meets another wizard named Jason, and Seph is told the truth about Leicester. The sage wizard planned on draining Seph’s power and harnessing it for his own wicked agenda. Seph also finds the teacher he had been looking for and together, they secretly study and plot their escape from Leicester and The Alumni.
The front cover of this book caught my eye at the bookstore, and from the first page, I was trapped under its spell. Being a sequel to The Warrior Heir, the novel is the classic story of a wizard trying to steal another wizard’s power for their own evil use, but with stronger emphasis on the different types of wizards and witches and their history. I enjoyed the fact that the reader learns everything about every character’s past. I also liked that Chima’s history of magic was linked to actual events in history. The Wizard Heir simultaneously tells the story of Seph and teaches the reader about magic. The novel seemed like a spell book at times. The Wizard Heir is a perfect blend of real life with the magical world. Those who like the Harry Potter saga will love this novel. Chima does a good job of explaining the story in one novel in which other authors would do in an entire series, leaving the reader with no questions to be asked. I enjoyed this novel very much and recommend it to anyone who is into stories of magic and adventure.
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I actually read "The Wizard Heir" and I really enjoyed it, but it seemed to drag at times and it became slightly confusing when there was all the talk about the different divisions of the magical world. The synopsis of "The Warrior Heir" was in the back of the first book and I was disappointed to see that the same characters weren't in the second book. Over all, the first book was kind of too long for my taste and the only real action happened at the end (and I knew what was going to happen at the end almost from the beginning of the book!).
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