And now the government is demanding to use this scarce resource in its war with France.Īmbitious orphan Prunella Gentleman is desperate to escape the school where she's drudged all her life, and a visit by the beleaguered Sorcerer Royal seems the perfect opportunity.

The Fairy Court is blocking its supply, straining England's dangerously declining magical stores. Meanwhile, the Society is failing its vital duty – to keep stable the levels of magic within His Majesty's lands. He leads the eminent Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, but a malicious faction seeks to remove him by fair means or foul. In Regency London, Zacharias Wythe is England's first African Sorcerer Royal. Hugo-Award winning author Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown is a Regency romp with a pinch of fairyland. Historical Britain will never be the same again' – Courtney Milan 'Inventive, dangerous, brilliant, unsettling. 'An enchanting cross between Georgette Heyer and Susanna Clarke, full of delights and surprises' – Naomi Novik, author of Uprooted Shortlisted for the 2016 Locus First Novel Award

Shortlisted for the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novel (Sept.Winner of the 2016 British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer Agent: Caitlin Blasdell, Liza Dawson Associates. Zacharias brings to mind another orphaned young wizard whose combination of grit and melancholy captured readers’ hearts, and ingenious, gutsy Prunella simply shines. Cho’s tale knits together a dizzying array of taut story lines populated by complex characters with interesting backstories. Daubeney’s School for Gentlewitches, where girls are trained to suppress their magical abilities because they supposedly lack the intelligence to be sorcerers, 19-year-old Prunella Gentlewoman stumbles across a long-forgotten legacy that could be the key to saving Zacharias’s life and restoring Britain’s magic. When Sir Stephen dies and Zacharias is reluctantly thrust into power, the Society is outraged at the thought of a black man governing its ilk and chooses to blame Britain’s dwindling magical resources-actually a longtime crisis-on the color of Zacharias’s skin. Zacharias Wythe, the child of enslaved Africans, has spent almost all of his 24 years apprenticing under his English adoptive father, Sir Stephen Wythe, Sorcerer Royal and member of the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers.

Set in the excruciatingly class-conscious realm of an alternate 19th-century England, Cho’s delightful debut novel skillfully blends fantasy and intrigue with issues of race and gender politics.

Sorcerer to the crown