The Wizard Who Kept himself Suspicious, by Scott Lynch


 

This is another of the Amazon Original Stories, currently available for free on Kindle and Audible for Prime customers.

I'd never read anything by Scott Lynch before, but I will definitely be looking him up and reading more of his books after this one.

The premise is that a group of wizards meets up every 13 years on a beach that only resurfaces that frequently -- and this time, one of them is setting out to prove that another can't actually do magic at all.

It quickly turns into a murder mystery -- on a beach that will only exist briefly, and in a world where the suspects can change things around them.

It honestly felt a lot like reading a Terry Pratchett novel, with some of the same humor.

In just about an hour and a half, the author took me into a whole new world, set up the magic system enough to be recognizable and understandable, introduced a variety of characters with their own biases, personalities, and motivations, and made all of them unique recognizable individuals.

Then within that, we got a murder mystery -- and yes, there's more to the mystery than is obvious right away.


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