The Ministry and the San Francisco Magical Incident: A Cozy Fantasy Novel of Mystery by Dael AstraMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I enjoyed the first book in the series, but I also had some issues with it, namely that its worldbuilding took too much too directly from the Harry Potter universe; that it was wordy and full of double and triple adjectives, which all had commas between them that they often should not have had; and that I sometimes didn't believe the emotional beats.
I'm delighted to report that this second book avoids all of those issues. No unnecessary Potter; it's tightly written and sparing in its adjectives, and when there are two of them there's only a comma if it needs one; and the emotional beats are sound and, to me, fully plausible, not to mention moving (which is where the fifth star comes in).
It isn't perfect. The author doesn't observe the convention that when the same speaker carries on from one paragraph to the next, you don't close the quotation marks in the first paragraph. A number of sentences phrased as questions don't have question marks. And there's a complete lack of recap; if you started with this book, rather than reading from the beginning of the series, you wouldn't know who the protagonist is, why she's in charge, how she's grown and changed from who she was previously (which is important), who her sidekick is and what their relationship is (it doesn't really progress in the course of the book), who the people she talks to back in New York are, the significance of the cat, or anything about how this universe works. All these things are alluded to rather than explained, and even though I read the first book last year, I didn't remember all of the events as clearly as I needed to in order to get the full context for this one. A little more "previously-on", delivered like backstory, would have gone a long way. Also, we never do get an explanation for what has kicked off the underlying crisis, but that's less important than that it exists and what the characters do in response to it.
It's a book that involves a lot of magical problem-solving, in an engineering sort of way, which I personally enjoy. Again, the rules of what everything does are not recapped, if they were even given in the first book, which I don't remember, but an experienced SFF reader should be able to follow it in general, and the important bit is the significance of what's happening, not the details of how it's done. The San Francisco magical office, which is based in three Victorian-style houses joined together, is under mysterious attack; things are going wrong in a way that implies sabotage, and it takes expertise and teamwork to fix them.
The teamwork is great. All of the characters are very mature; they can talk about their feelings, they can set their feelings aside and do the right thing rather than the thing they prefer, they support each other, they're honest with each other even when that shows them in a negative light.
The plot gives a sense of urgency and momentum even before the ticking clock starts, in contrast to the wordy languor of Book 1, while keeping away from the thriller trap of action that means nothing. Every action has emotional weight, because people's wellbeing is at stake.
The self-important cat is wonderful, especially in the part where the characters go to an alternate San Francisco where cats and dogs are in charge and humans are their staff - not just in the joking way we sometimes say that, but for real.
I enjoyed it very much, and it's good to see growth not only in the characters but in the skill of the author. I look forward to the next instalment.
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