# 1
Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult / Dark Fantasy
One of Us Is Lying meets A Deadly Education in this
fantasy thriller that follows six teenage wizards as they fight to make
it home alive after a malfunctioning spell leaves them stranded in the
wilderness.
Ren Monroe has spent four years proving she’s one
of the best wizards in her generation. But top marks at Balmerick
University will mean nothing if she fails to get recruited into one of
the major houses. Enter Theo Brood. If being rich were a sin, he’d
already be halfway to hell. After a failed and disastrous party trick,
fate has the two of them crossing paths at the public waxway portal the
day before holidays—Theo’s punishment is to travel home with the
scholarship kids. Which doesn’t sit well with any of them.
A
fight breaks out. In the chaos, the portal spell malfunctions. All six
students are snatched from the safety of the school’s campus and set
down in the middle of nowhere. And one of them is dead on arrival.
If
anyone can get them through the punishing wilderness with limited
magical reserves it’s Ren. She’s been in survival mode her entire life.
But no magic could prepare her for the tangled secrets the rest of the
group is harboring, or for what’s following them through the dark woods…
A Door in the Dark, by author Scott Reintgen, is the first installment in the authors Waxway's series. The series is set in a fictitious world known as Kathor. In this world, the entire city's magical supply comes from underground. Unfortunately, the city's supply of magic is nearly depleted and society is on the brink of collapsing even though the 5 major Houses refuse to acknowledge the impending doom of their society. The story is told in the first person narrative by Ren Monroe.
Ren, who comes from the lower class, has been attempting to gain access to one of the 5 Houses. She's spent four years proving she’s one of the best wizards in
her generation. But top marks at Balmerick University will mean nothing
if she fails to get recruited. After Theo Blood's failed and disastrous party trick, Theo’s
punishment is to travel home with the scholarship kids. Which doesn’t
sit well with any of them.
A fight breaks out in what's called the Waxway, the portal spell malfunctions. All six
students (Timmons Devine, Theo Blood, Avy Williams, Cora Marrin, Clyde Winters and Ren Monroe) are snatched from the safety of the school’s campus and set
down in the middle of nowhere. And one of them is dead on arrival. One who will eventually come back to haunt the remaining survivors. If anyone can get them through the punishing wilderness with limited
magical reserves it’s Ren.
She’s been in survival mode her entire life because of her upbringing and her scholarship status.
But no magic could prepare her for the tangled secrets the rest of the
group is harboring, or for what’s following them through the dark woods. Ren is torn between her ultimate revenge
plan and her staying true to herself and her best friend Timmons who has the unique ability of enhancing a person's magic. The world building and magic system were both
explained thoroughly without making the pace drag at any point of the
story. The characters are easily separated even though we meet most of
them all at once.
As this is the initial installment in this series, there's plenty more to come. Ren has to do some serious soul searching, and she has to make sure that the Houses don't step on her hopes and her dreams before she can get revenge for what happened to her father, and her mother.
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1
Wind
prowled wolflike through the waiting crowd, sinking its teeth into
exposed necks and bare ankles. Ren kept her hood up and her eyes down.
Still, it found every threadbare hole and feasted. There was an unspoken
camaraderie to how everyone in line huddled closer together as it
howled. On the first day of every month, Ren left her dormitory on
Balmerick’s campus and traveled down to wait in line in the Lower
Quarter.
She knew the place by memory now. The patterns on the
stone walkway. How decades of passing boots had rounded its edges. The
rows of windows that were always boarded shut. Even the other people who
waited in line with her, assigned to this particular magic-house.
Sunlight
might have warded off the chill, but there wasn’t sunlight in this
section of the Lower Quarter. Not at this hour. Not in her lifetime. Ren
couldn’t resist looking up.
The Heights hovered magically
overhead. When she was a child, it had been a marvel to her. An awe that
only grew when she studied the actual magical theories involved. It was
no small task for the Proctor family to create an entire neighborhood
of glinting buildings in the clouds. Her favorite part had been the
relocation of Balmerick University. The building’s foundations had
proven rather tricky. Decades of residual magic had made the walls more
or less sentient. It turned out they liked where they’d settled down in
the Lower Quarter. A team of wizards had used veracity alteration spells
to convince each individual rock that the sky was actually the earth.
Ren liked to imagine them spending hours underground, lying to the
stones.
“Eyes ahead, dear.”
Ren startled. She’d allowed a
gap to form in the line. Two strides brought her back into position. She
glanced at the woman who’d spoken, an apology ready, before recognizing
her.
“Aunt Sloan.”
Not her real aunt. Her mother was an
only child, just as Ren was an only child. But every woman who lived in
their building was an aunt. Every man an uncle. The other kids were all
cousins, until they were old enough to start flirting and figuring out
where they could sneak kisses without being seen. Aunt Sloan lived up on
the third floor. She worked on the wharf.
“Little Monroe,” she said. “How’s your mother?”
“Doing well. Strong and happy and willful.”
Sloan
laughed. “Of course. I hate that our shifts changed. It’s been too long
since she and I sat down to play a few hands of barons together. About
four years now. Agnes was always such a good time, too. It’s a shame
she’s all alone these days.”
Barons was a rotating card game that
Ren’s mother loved. It involved seven suits, and the winner was usually
the one who got away with the most cheating. Ren quietly took note of
the other implications hidden beneath Aunt Sloan’s words. She kept her
tone neutral, polite.
“I will tell her you said hello.”
Sloan nodded. “It’s kind of you to stand in line for her.”
Her
aunt gestured to the bracelet hanging on Ren’s wrist. It was a
memorable piece. A little loop of dragon-forged iron. Smoke black except
for the rivulets of flickering fire that boiled in the metal’s depths.
Ren’s father had bought it for her mother as a wedding gift. It was for
the woman, he’d said, who bent to the will of no one. And a nod to the
fire she brought out in him.
Sloan kept prattling on. “… my boys.
Too busy to stand in for me. Both of them landed jobs in Peckering’s
workshop. Making ends meet. You know how it all goes, dear. Or you did.
Before you went off to live in the clouds and do your… studies.”
There
it was. The neighborhood’s favorite slice of gossip. Ren knew the
others always wondered how she’d gotten into a private school like
Balmerick. What trick did the Monroes have up their sleeves? They always
praised the achievement to her face, but she knew exactly what they
said behind her and her mother’s backs. Reaching for the stars, isn’t she? Bound to come back empty-handed.
The
line moved. Ren used it as an excuse to drop the conversation. She kept
her eyes forward and waited patiently until it was her turn. A pair of
doors were propped open. The building to which they belonged was hunched
and industrious, singular in its purpose. A government official sat at a
table. His hair was slicked back, eyes narrowed in meticulous
calculation. He offered the barest of nods when Ren stepped forward.
“Vessel?”
“I have two that need to be refilled, sir. One is mine. One belongs to my mother.”
She
slid off her mother’s bracelet and set it on the table. Next she
reached for the wand hanging from the loop on her belt. Her own was
shaped like a horseshoe. Both ends curved to sharpened points, but the
central section offered a crude handle for her grip. She preferred this
style to the aim-and-point wands. She’d found it far easier to control
the range of her spells.
The government accountant briefly appraised both items.
“Listed under Agnes Monroe and Ren Monroe.”
He
ran a finger down the list of names. She saw him pause and knew the
question he’d ask before his lips even moved. “And what about Roland
Monroe?”
The name shivered down her spine the way it always did
when a stranger spoke it so casually. Ren saw a brief vision of his
body, bent in all the wrong ways. Every time she came to collect her
monthly allotment, they would say his name before tracing the line
across to see the explanation for his absence. Ren spoke the word before
the man could. The smallest of victories.
“Deceased.”
He
tapped the notation in front of him and nodded. They never showed
sympathy. Never whispered a condolence. It was just a status that
determined how the rest of the transaction should go. This particular
arbiter didn’t even bother to make eye contact.
“Very well. I’ve
got you listed for an allowance of one hundred ockleys per vessel. The
law requires I inform you that another magical stipend will be avail—”
Ren cleared her throat. “I’ve got coin to add more. If that’s okay?”
“How much?”
“Just twenty mids. I earned a few tips this week.”
He
hunched back over his list to make another notation. Ren had learned
never to add too much. A big down payment could earn unwanted attention.
Sometimes the government would investigate. Cut off your welfare
entirely. She couldn’t afford for that to happen.
“Twenty mids convert to about two hundred more ockleys.”
If you want to be precise, it’s 201.32.
But Ren only nodded at the approximation. An ockley was the exact
amount of magic it took to use a single-step spell. Named for Reverend
Ockley, who Ren knew had come up with the original and very incorrect
equation. His math had been honed by far cleverer wizards, but he was
the one in the history books. Sometimes, being first was all that
mattered. Ren looked up and realized the accountant was staring at her.
He repeated himself.
“Which item do you want them added to?”
“The bracelet,” she answered. “My mother could use the extra spells.”
A
well-worn lie. It fit like an old shoe at this point. Her mother hadn’t
used any of their magical allowance in years. The man didn’t ask any
questions, though. He simply turned and handed the two vessels to a
hired runner. The young girl slipped inside the warehouse through an
interior door. Ren caught a glimpse of the factory-like rows. Discolored
gases churned in the enclosed space. It was still strange to think the
city’s entire magical supply came from underground. Ren knew the
histories. She’d memorized all the dates for her exams back in
undergrad. She could recite the year that her people—the Delveans—first
landed on this continent. She knew the name of the woman who’d cast the
first recorded spell in their people’s history, and the group of wizards
who’d invented the conversion process that refined raw magic into a
form that could be dispensed to the masses. Like every other primary
school student, she’d memorized the names of the four ships that had
sailed up the eastern seaboard to land in what would one day become
Kathor.
She’d also read through all the modern theories and
conspiracies about magic refineries. One author claimed there was
infinite magic underneath their city and that the five wealthiest houses
had created a scarcity model to keep the rest of the population
underfoot. Another claimed that the city’s supply was nearly depleted,
and when it ran out, society would completely collapse. After spending
time with the scions and heirs at Balmerick, Ren suspected the former
was far more likely to be true.
As the interior door shut with a
thump, Ren watched the girl vanish with the two most valuable items she
possessed. She wondered how the accountant—who’d barely even looked at
her—might react if he knew all the spellwork written into the veins of
each of those vessels. All the time she’d spent hammering perfection
into her stances and her enunciations.
All he sees is another welfare wizard.
“You can step to the side. She’ll return shortly.”
Ren
complied. She felt an itch at the back of her neck. A whisper of an
echo of a curse. This was where she always stood as she waited for her
items. She knew that the alley over her right shoulder ran straight and
narrow, down to the place where her life had changed forever. Every time
she stood here, she tried to resist looking. And every time she failed.
As Aunt Sloan stepped up to speak with the accountant, Ren looked down
that arrow of an alleyway.
It pointed to the distant canal
bridge. Unfinished back then, it was the place where her father had
turned to wave back at her. Ren’s eyes found the wooden bench where
she’d sat down to wait for him. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it was
still there. Like a relic that she’d summoned from her own memories. And
then she imagined hearing the sound of the earth grinding beneath their
feet as it had that day. The way her father had looked back one final
time before he fell. Her entire life, changed in less than a breath.
“Your things?”
The
girl was back, standing with both vessels held out. Ren liked to
imagine she saw a new glow in them, but the truth was they looked
exactly the same. She accepted both vessels, and the runner slipped back
to her position behind the table. Ren glanced at the line one more
time.
Everyone was waiting. She knew they’d refill their vessels
and use spells that unwound the knots in their backs. Spells that added
strength to get them through another grueling day. Aunt Sloan liked to
spice her soups with a little magic. Others entertained grandchildren
with clever charms. She almost envied the thought. Using magic to touch
up their days. Meanwhile, she would spend the next few weeks trying to
create entirely new spells with her meager allotment. Doing her best to
impress people who seemed to find nothing so impressive as their own
lives.
Ren took a final look, tucked her wand into a waiting belt loop, and started to walk.
