This new urban fantasy series by the author of the Alex Verus books stars a young Englishman struggling to balance earning a living, socializing with friends, and practicing his Drucraft magic. Stephen's progress is slow on all counts. His job is a boring temporary position, but it's still the best job he's found and allows him to rent a shabby room near his friends. His father taught him the basics of Drucraft but vanished before he could impart many details on techniques or the magical society that must surely exist. Then an arrogant young woman claiming to be his cousin appears on his doorstep, spouts a lot of cryptic statements, offers to help him, and then sends in her thugs to kidnap him without explaining why. Although the premise is hardly groundbreaking, the unique magic system helps this book stand out in an overcrowded genre.

Like many series starters this one takes advantage of Stephen's lack of magical education to teach the reader alongside him. What Stephen originally knows of Drucraft is fairly simple. Drucraft is the art of crafting sigls which can then be used to create various effects by channeling essentia into them. He spent years figuring out how to connect with his essentia and then that of the environment before weaving it into constructs. If this is done at a Well of magic he can attempt to imbue the construct with power from the Well and materialize it into a small bead, a sigl. Sadly his father only explained how to make a basic Light sigl and Stephen only has access to a weak Well that refills slowly over a year so he's only made two of them. His ignorance is both a blessing and a curse. Most modern Drucrafters simply buy sigls so are restricted to what is commercially available and they are expensive. He also has no idea that some of what he does is generally known to be "impossible".

As for his connection to the magical community that's a tangled mess. It seems his mother who took off when he was only one year old belongs to a magical House of at least moderate influence and the head of that House is deciding on his Heir. No one bothers to explain to Stephen why this has people kidnapping him and threatening his cat. The Head of House himself states that Stephen is definitely not the Heir and dismisses him as useless. This doesn't stop his cousin from trying to use him or her cousin from manipulating Stephen. All he has on his side are his best friend who thinks Drucraft is a fantasy game, a priest who answers his questions in return for reading theology, a woman who answers questions for stacks of cash while trying to recruit him into indentured servitude, and his cat.

Jacka himself describes this first book as an introduction to this new world and Drucraft so its not surprising that there isn't a lot of action, although there are some Drucrafter sigl enhanced brawls to give you an idea of where things might be heading. I give it a B+ because the magic is new, the writing is good, and there aren't too many tropes along the way, but I would prefer a little more action and a less predictable plot. Overall reviews are giving it 4.8 stars on Audible with many giving Will Watt 5 stars as narrator.