There is something about the setting of Regency England that draws some people. There’s an appeal to a world where the rules are clear, everyone is trying very hard to be civil, and there is a common belief that rational principles will solve everything. For most writers, a key to maintaining this appeal is to not let their readers think too much about the colonialism and subjugation of foreign peoples that allowed the sort of people that are typically the protagonists in Regency fiction to live such genteel lives. Sorcerer to the Crown shows that Zen Cho is not one of those writers. Thank goodness.
In this England, traffic between the Fairyland and the world of humans was once common, is now less so, and has given the country a tradition of magic for any number of uses. At the forefront of magical research is the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers and at the head of the Society is the Sorcerer Royal. As the story begins, no one is particularly happy that the title has recently passed to Zacharias Wythe, a freed Black man raised by the now-deceased previous titleholder. A very vocal segment of the Society is more than ready to claim that Zacharias is both undeserving of his new position and is responsible for the decline of available magic in England.
On a trip to the border with Fairyland to investigate the second matter, Zacharias meets Prunella Gentleman, a young woman with both far more magical ability than English society is comfortable with someone of her gender having and skin a bit too dark for anyone to think of her as purely English. She also has the audacity and the will to appeal to the reformer in Zacharias, so that he will take her to back to London and help her to learn how to best use her considerable gifts. Together they will face scheming magicians, vengeful fairies, and tense diplomatic situations, and maybe, start the process to leaving England a better place than they found it.
Sorcerer to the Crown is a lively story, perfect for readers who are fond of historical fantasy but tired of the genre’s tendency to ignore the wider world that history existed in.