The Wizard of London

The Wizard of London by Mercedes Lackey is book 4 of her Elemental Masters series.  I’ll note that I picked this book up without having read anything else in the series and enjoyed it just fine as a stand alone.  In this book we follow a pair of young girls at school in a slightly different version of Victorian England.  One girl grew up the daughter of missionaries in Africa and has been sent back to England for schooling.  The other girl is essentially a misplaced orphan who finds refuge in the school.  Both girls are talented in a psychic sense and the story focus on them, and the school staff, discovering and attempting to thwart what is essentially an evil magician.

The book was quite enjoyable though I found the reasons that turned the evil magician evil completely understandable in a way that made her defeat a bit sad even though she really did deserve to be defeated based on the actions her reasoning drove her to (that’s quite the sentence but I’ll let it stand).  The book is recommended for those who enjoy a light fantasy story.