Give me a fantasy world with questionable maps, ancient infrastructure, and people arguing over how to get somewhere, and you’ve got my attention. HL Bernabe’s Cooking Up Magick understands the entertainment value of a journey that requires actual planning. Roads matter. Terrain matters. So do supplies, transportation, and the irritating fact that everyone travels at a different speed. Paisley Dell’s wish to explore the world’s cuisines provides an appealing starting point, but what caught my interest was how thoroughly Bernabe thinks through the world she’ll have to cross. Erdea has the accumulated history of a place people have been building, fighting over, and making themselves comfortable in for centuries. Even its old magick has practical consequences for the people living there now.

I particularly enjoyed the attention to work and expertise. Botany, medicine, languages, agriculture, and military strategy all get their moment, and knowledge can change the possibilities of a scene. Buckley’s fascination with plants is a good example of how a character’s profession becomes part of the adventure’s machinery. Bernabe also explores how societies decide which talents deserve respect and who’s allowed to pursue them. Expectations around gender, ancestry, and family status influence people’s choices, sometimes painfully. Those pressures give the different cultures something more substantial than distinctive clothing or unfamiliar names. You start to understand what it would feel like to grow up inside their rules. The pronunciation guide and glossary are useful additions for readers who enjoy examining the details of an invented world.

The approach to magick held my interest, too. Learning involves experimentation, imperfect explanations, physical effort, and the occasional spectacular mistake. There’s something satisfying about watching people work out what an ability does and how to use it responsibly. That same practical curiosity carries into the larger conflict. Leaders have to consider what they know, what they’re guessing, and what they can afford to risk. Bernabe gives these decisions space, so the political and military stakes develop through discussions as well as action. The shifting viewpoints help here: you can follow different interpretations of the same situation and watch uncertainty become a source of tension. There’s a distinctly tabletop-adventure pleasure in seeing a difficult problem approached by people with different skills and incomplete information.

The book’s voice is loose, cheeky, and comfortable being outrageous. Its dialogue includes swearing, rude jokes, and the kind of exasperated remarks people make when a situation has become thoroughly ridiculous. Alongside that humor, Bernabe writes violence with blunt physical detail and takes the consequences seriously. Moving between those registers gives the novel an unruly energy that I found memorable. The descriptive passages also make good use of space, particularly when the setting shifts between open country and the built environment of the dwarven kingdom. As the opening installment of a larger story, it offers plenty for readers who enjoy learning how a fantasy world functions while an adventure gathers momentum. Cooking Up Magick makes the workings of its world as compelling as the dangers waiting inside it.

Pages: 427 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0HC7QPB6K