Review: The Mudpuddle Manual of Natural Magic

The Mudpuddle Manual of Natural Magic by Ciara Blume
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I generally avoid what I refer to as "this damn thing again" when I see it. By that I mean a book in which a young-to-middle-aged woman with nothing much positive going on in her life (either no relationship or one that recently ended, and a job and living situation she can leave without regret), who inherits a property and/or business from an elderly relative, goes back to her hometown, discovers she has a magical heritage, meets a love interest and participates in solving a mystery. There's generally also a best friend and a cute animal. There seem to be thousands of books now with this exact setup, and I grew sick of them years ago, particularly since they're usually badly executed.

This one, though, inserted a couple of twists on the tired formula and slipped it past me before I twigged. For a start, the heroine, Maida, already technically owned the house/business, a bookshop and cafe; she just didn't know it. Also, the elderly relative (a great-aunt) who's been running the place isn't dead, though Maida doesn't know this either (for sure) for quite a while - the reader does, though. The cute animal belongs to the romantic interest's daughter (he's a widower), not to the heroine. The best friend plays very little role and is offstage for the entire book, spoken to only on the phone.

This is a version of our world without cellphones and, I think, without the internet, so around a 1980s or even 1970s tech level. The main impact this has is that people aren't always able to contact each other or call for help if there isn't a landline nearby, though some of the magical people have telepathic watches that are early-internet-adjacent. There are shifters, witches, fae, and (offscreen, with the best friend) vampires. It's possible that this started life as a Harry Potter fanfic, or at least used elements of the HP universe; the phrase "wizarding world" comes up at one point, and male magic users are sometimes called "wizards," though there do seem to be Ordinary (= muggle) people who have found a way to use magic, and are called "mages". There's a whole pureblood thing going on, too. The chapters are headed with extracts from several different books, and one is about how important it is to preserve pure witch/wizard bloodlines (it's about as awful as you'd expect). Marriages between witches and shifters are severely looked down upon and often don't produce viable offspring, but sometimes they do, and not all "pureblood" families are actually as pure as they pretend.

Departing from HP, there is "synthetic magic," which is addictive for magicals and gives Ordinaries some degree of ability. It's a major plot driver, and the antagonist is a startup douche who founded the company that makes and distributes it. He's utterly unconcerned about negative effects, and practically argues that they're a feature (see above under "startup douche"). 

Maida makes a mostly pleasant main character, with a distressing backstory which she gets over without much difficulty. There are several sympathetic male characters besides the love interest (Maida's father, his executive assistant who's like a brother to her, an elderly wizard we meet near the beginning). Everyone's nice except the startup douche and Maida's aunt, who's determined to take offence at and criticize absolutely everything about her, though they all have their flaws and foibles as well. Her great-aunt is the secondary protagonist, and has a satisfying arc.

I had a pre-publication copy from Netgalley, and there are some commas where they shouldn't be, a few apostrophe errors and a shortage of hyphens in compound adjectives (which aren't compulsory, at least not for American English, but do make reading easier). Hopefully it will get another edit before publication, but even if it doesn't, it's quite readable.

Overall, I found it a pleasant read, with likeable characters and a well-constructed plot, albeit built on a version of what's become the standard chassis for this type of book. If you like this kind of thing, this is certainly one, and a better-than-average one, though for me it fell short of being amazing.

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