Isadora (Isa) and Fernando (Nando) had been left with their uncle by their parents and older brothers, who went to the New World. After a year of no news from them, however, their uncle has more than tired of them, and sells them to the traveler Mordecai. However, Mordecai is no simple elderly bearded man…he is a magician, and Isa and Nando are his first recruits to the new Magical Arts Academy he is starting. If they can even get to it, that is – the Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy (SMS) are on their tails, chasing them to prevent them from getting to the Academy, with killer magic and magicians at their disposal.
I listened to the omnibus version of the first four books of the series, which is really the way these books should be read – each “book” is more of an installment, and they only have a (mostly) complete story as an omnibus. Even as a whole, though, it read as a constant comedy of errors, with the SMS constantly attacking them on their journey and even once they got to the estate where the school will be, frequently narrowly failing to kill them all. Pretty much none of the adults showing in their actions how they are some of the greatest magicians of their time, and no one tells Isa or Nando much of anything instead expecting them to just know what’s going on despite how they know the two late-teenagers grew up without exposure to magic. Plus, since it was originally published in installments, there is a lot of repetition of basic facts, like how the SMS is the Sorcerers for Magical Supremacy – understandable in longer books or because of how it is an omnibus of four installments, but annoying when listening to it as a whole. A highlight is getting to meet Lord Lancelot the owl, Humbert the dragon, and the various firedrakes (notably Sylvie and Mathieu).
The best part of this omnibus was the performance by Kate Marcin, even at 1.2x speed. She did an exemplary job with the various accents and differentiating characters not only by accent, but also by men/women. Of course, I could just be a sucker for accents…but still, that does not detract from her performance, which largely carried the listen for me.