Amy's Reviews > Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot

As the title states, this is a book of letters between two young ladies in England in the post-Napoleonic war era. In many ways, it reads like a 'typical' regency romance novel. Two young girls are corresponding; one is in London for the season, the other has been deemed too immature and likely to get in trouble and so remains on the country estate. The letters are filled with descriptions of items of clothing, dance, and people typical of that era.

The twist is the inclusion of magic. In this world, there are wizards and magicians all around, hatching evil plots which must be foiled. Like His Majesty's Dragon and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, this book combines fantasy elements with the traditional historical setting. In this book, it presents the perspective of very young and sheltered girls - which is probably why this is considered a young adult novel.

As mentioned in the afterword, this book originated as a letter game between the two authors. They agreed on a world and starting conditions; then they each assumed one character and wrote letters to each other. Neither author knew where the plot would go; they wrote their letters in reaction to the previous letter. After all of the letters were collected, they got together to edit the letters to make the final version a little bit more cohesive. While this probably adds to the charm and the uniqueness of the characters, it also means that the plot is a bit flimsy. Nothing is too complicated; often, magical intervention occurs just in time to resolve whatever little problem occurs. And there don't seem to be any limits to what magic can accomplish; while the spell-process is primitive and superstitious at some points (charm bags made out of herbs?) at other points the authors allude to advanced equations necessary for spell-casting.

This novel is unique enough to make it a fun read for anyone interested in historically based fantasy; it also should appeal to anyone interested in traditional regency romance, if you don't mind a bit of magic.