- Find all the latest books, toys, games and DVDs from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in our Harry Potter store.
A Most Improper Magick
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| |||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's 1803. 12-year-old Kat Stephenson has chopped off her hair, put on boy's clothing and is running away from home to save her family's fortune. Her eldest sister, Elissa, drags her back before she even gets to the bottom of the garden.
The Stephenson family stands on the verge of ruin. Eldest son, Charles, has gambled away the family's fortune and does little but sit in his room since being sent down from Oxford University for bad behaviour. There is little prospect of Mr Stephenson, a respectable vicar, of restoring the family's position as his own reputation was damaged by the fact that his first wife - Kat's mother - was a notorious and flagrant witch.
Kat's step-mother has a solution - marry Elissa off to Sir Neville Collingwood, one of the wealthiest men in England. Unfortunately Sir Neville is 20 years older than Elissa and has an unsavoury reputation of his own, thanks to the mysterious death of his first wife.
Kat and her middle sister, Angeline, will do anything to stop the wedding from happening and both are prepared to use an inheritance from their mother to do it - magic. As Kat sets about trying to save her family, she learns more about her real mother's magical heritage and in particular an ancient and secretive magical Order that seeks to claim her for her own.
Stephanie Burgis's debut novel is a charming mix of adventure, highwaymen, magic and spirited heroines - a mix of Diana Wynn Jones and Jane Austen. Kat is a wonderful character - smart, spirited, determined and resolute - she wants the best for her family and will do anything to save them. Her growing discovery of her magical powers and the truth about her mother is well depicted while her encounters with certain members of the Order never quite go the way you expect.
Particularly good is the portrayal of Kat's relationship with her sisters. As the youngest, Kat feels excluded from serious conversations and the three of them constantly bicker and squabble, there's a real sense of love and devotion between them all as well as the exasperation. Although Kat's stepmother comes close to cliché, with her sniffy attitude to Kat's real mother, Burgis keeps her believable and fans of Jane Austen will recognise the type.
All in all, it's a sparkling fun read with a great set-up for the sequel, which I will definitely be reading.
The Stephenson family stands on the verge of ruin. Eldest son, Charles, has gambled away the family's fortune and does little but sit in his room since being sent down from Oxford University for bad behaviour. There is little prospect of Mr Stephenson, a respectable vicar, of restoring the family's position as his own reputation was damaged by the fact that his first wife - Kat's mother - was a notorious and flagrant witch.
Kat's step-mother has a solution - marry Elissa off to Sir Neville Collingwood, one of the wealthiest men in England. Unfortunately Sir Neville is 20 years older than Elissa and has an unsavoury reputation of his own, thanks to the mysterious death of his first wife.
Kat and her middle sister, Angeline, will do anything to stop the wedding from happening and both are prepared to use an inheritance from their mother to do it - magic. As Kat sets about trying to save her family, she learns more about her real mother's magical heritage and in particular an ancient and secretive magical Order that seeks to claim her for her own.
Stephanie Burgis's debut novel is a charming mix of adventure, highwaymen, magic and spirited heroines - a mix of Diana Wynn Jones and Jane Austen. Kat is a wonderful character - smart, spirited, determined and resolute - she wants the best for her family and will do anything to save them. Her growing discovery of her magical powers and the truth about her mother is well depicted while her encounters with certain members of the Order never quite go the way you expect.
Particularly good is the portrayal of Kat's relationship with her sisters. As the youngest, Kat feels excluded from serious conversations and the three of them constantly bicker and squabble, there's a real sense of love and devotion between them all as well as the exasperation. Although Kat's stepmother comes close to cliché, with her sniffy attitude to Kat's real mother, Burgis keeps her believable and fans of Jane Austen will recognise the type.
All in all, it's a sparkling fun read with a great set-up for the sequel, which I will definitely be reading.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Lookout Regency England: Kat Stephenson has landed. We may be in Jane Austen territory, but my guess is that Mr Darcy and co wouldn't last five minutes with the unladylike heroine of A Most Improper Magick. In the midst of polite Regency society, Kat Stephenson is a character who swims against the tide of social-climbing stepmothers, villainous lords and very proper older sisters in empire line dresses. Where the Bennett sisters would swoon, she swaggers. She's easy to relate to: as the youngest of four, she's forever bossed around and treated like a nuisance by the older siblings who foolishly fail to recognise how quite formidable their kid sister really is. She's boisterous, independent and doesn't care for etiquette. And if all that isn't enough to tell you that she's the kind of character who'll turn this polite society upside down, she's also MAGIC. What could be better than that?
Because the most intriguing thing about A Most Improper Magick has to be its take on the supernatural world. There's your regular witchcraft, of course: love spells and enchantments and more sinister dark varieties. And then there's the power of the Guardians: a potent inherited magic possessed by those who belong to the secret Order that Kat stumbles across when her late mother's golden mirror transports her to another dimension. As this is the first book in a series, we're shown just enough of this world to pique our interest, as Kat has her first taste of magic, sorts out her sisters' love lives and makes her own mind up about the mysterious Order of Guardians. It's clear there'll be much to discover in the next instalment, and I can't help wondering whether Kat's family - particularly witchcraft-practising middle-sister Angeline - will be the cause of her troubles next time around.
Amidst all the magic and matchmaking, A Most Improper Magick gives us a proper page-turning adventure story. Kat fearlessly encounters shady aristocratic villains, sneaks around the gothic Grantham Abbey and even throws herself in the path of highwaymen - and all with a cheeky wit and resourcefulness that makes her exactly the kind of heroine a reader can't help rooting for. It's a story that shows a different side to the refined Regency world you read about in other books or see on TV: an unladylike side that's more fun than I ever could have expected to find there.
A Most Improper Magick is a treat of a book. Packed with magic, mischief and peril, it's a good old fashioned yarn with a 21st century style heroine. I'd recommend it to tweens or younger teens looking for a wicked supernatural adventure with added girl power.
Because the most intriguing thing about A Most Improper Magick has to be its take on the supernatural world. There's your regular witchcraft, of course: love spells and enchantments and more sinister dark varieties. And then there's the power of the Guardians: a potent inherited magic possessed by those who belong to the secret Order that Kat stumbles across when her late mother's golden mirror transports her to another dimension. As this is the first book in a series, we're shown just enough of this world to pique our interest, as Kat has her first taste of magic, sorts out her sisters' love lives and makes her own mind up about the mysterious Order of Guardians. It's clear there'll be much to discover in the next instalment, and I can't help wondering whether Kat's family - particularly witchcraft-practising middle-sister Angeline - will be the cause of her troubles next time around.
Amidst all the magic and matchmaking, A Most Improper Magick gives us a proper page-turning adventure story. Kat fearlessly encounters shady aristocratic villains, sneaks around the gothic Grantham Abbey and even throws herself in the path of highwaymen - and all with a cheeky wit and resourcefulness that makes her exactly the kind of heroine a reader can't help rooting for. It's a story that shows a different side to the refined Regency world you read about in other books or see on TV: an unladylike side that's more fun than I ever could have expected to find there.
A Most Improper Magick is a treat of a book. Packed with magic, mischief and peril, it's a good old fashioned yarn with a 21st century style heroine. I'd recommend it to tweens or younger teens looking for a wicked supernatural adventure with added girl power.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Outwardly, there is nothing much to separate Kat Stephenson's family from the rest of Regency England: her father is a vicar, her stepmother an avid social climber who raises her three stepdaughters to be dainty ladies suitable for contracting profitable marriages. However, there is Kat's mother, whom no one talks about--and not because she shamelessly ran off or flirted with one man too many. No, Kat's mother was a witch: the kind that can make the teapot pour by itself at a social gathering, or cast love spells to make and break marriages.
Kat's family is in desperate straits: her feckless brother has ruined them through gambling debts, and their only way of escape is for one of her elder sisters to marry a richer, older man--about whom there are some definitely unsavoury rumors. It's up to Kat to save the day, with the help of her mother's spell books and magical mirror.
I got this book on Saturday morning, and finished it by Saturday afternoon. It was a great romp: fast-paced, with some hilarious setpieces and some great character interactions. I loved the portrayal of the three sisters and how they stuck by each other; and Stephanie very nicely and concisely portrays the burden of social mores that were the characteristic of the time period. The storyline zips and turns as Kat keeps landing from one set of troubles into another (I especially loved poor Mr Carlyle, besotted by a stray love spell and who kept following Kat's sister like a puppy), and the magic makes a nifty addition to an already packed storyline.
Oh, and it's got highwaymen. Seriously, what more can you ask for?
(well, ok, I know what I can ask for. Book 2. But it looks I get to wait a year for that...)
Kat's family is in desperate straits: her feckless brother has ruined them through gambling debts, and their only way of escape is for one of her elder sisters to marry a richer, older man--about whom there are some definitely unsavoury rumors. It's up to Kat to save the day, with the help of her mother's spell books and magical mirror.
I got this book on Saturday morning, and finished it by Saturday afternoon. It was a great romp: fast-paced, with some hilarious setpieces and some great character interactions. I loved the portrayal of the three sisters and how they stuck by each other; and Stephanie very nicely and concisely portrays the burden of social mores that were the characteristic of the time period. The storyline zips and turns as Kat keeps landing from one set of troubles into another (I especially loved poor Mr Carlyle, besotted by a stray love spell and who kept following Kat's sister like a puppy), and the magic makes a nifty addition to an already packed storyline.
Oh, and it's got highwaymen. Seriously, what more can you ask for?
(well, ok, I know what I can ask for. Book 2. But it looks I get to wait a year for that...)
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A most Improper Magick
I must admit that when I first picked up `A most Improper Magick' I had never heard of it before. In fact I just thought that it had a really nice cover and I only ever intended it... Read more
Published 1 month ago by nightswhisper747
Funny, witty and insanely sweet read
Jane Austen references? Magic? A feisty heroine? An adventure? YES PLEASE!
A Most Improper Magick, The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson is a funny, witty and insanely... Read more
A Most Improper Magick, The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson is a funny, witty and insanely... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Caroline
Regency England brought to glorious life plus magic = win
I will start by saying that this book makes me want to say things like ' spiffing' and 'jolly good show old chap' but hey that's just me [ : D ]
Set in Regency England... Read more
Set in Regency England... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Book Angel Emma
A most improper young lady - thank goodness!
"I was twelve years of age when I chopped off my hair, dressed as a boy, and set off to save my family from impending ruin. I made it almost to the end of my front garden... Read more
Published 10 months ago by C. D. Meetens
What fun!
My daughters -- ages 11 and 14 -- had a great time reading this book, and so did I. It has a wonderful, fearless, feisty female heroine -- A bit like Harry Potter (or maybe... Read more
Published 11 months ago by SamIAm
A Most Improper Magick
The first I actually heard of this book was when my other book blogger friends were receiving copies of the US version Kat, Incorrigible. Read more
Published 11 months ago by District YA
Fantastic fun
This is a wonderful, fun read. Kat is a great heroine, the plot is racy and full of excitement and the relationship between Kat and her sisters is believable and touching. Read more
Published 11 months ago by A. Baker
Best Book ihe world
A most improper magick is the best book i have read! i love the way that it is set in the olden days and when i read it i could not put it down! Read more
Published 18 months ago
Fantastic!!!
I sat down to read this book and couldn't put it down (and I read a lot of books, so that's saying something). It was hilarious, heartwarming and totally immersive. Read more
Published 22 months ago by E. M. Tippetts
Delightful!
My copy arrived this morning, and I spent much of this afternoon devouring it - a delightful book - well written, great story, totally believable characters.
Published 22 months ago by Raven
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
