Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa

Book Review

Elloise Hopkins

In a cottage on the coast, Cyril waits for the world to end. The sky has turned black. His familiar, the Abyssinian Cat, Shoestring, is dead. What kind of mage allows his familiar to die? Yet Cyril cannot cry. The only option left to him is to try to undo everything that went wrong. Everything that his husband, the king, has destroyed. Bound as he is, Cyril, mage and mourner, desperately prepares the ritual.

When he wakes, things are not the same way Cyril left them. Nor are they the same as they had been the first time around. Starting with Shoestring, who is certainly not the cat he was. With the ritual complete, and inhabiting his own, younger body, Cyril needs to discover just how far back into the past he has traveled, and just how he is going to confront his husband, the young Prince of Farsala, and somehow right the terrible wrongs he wrought.

Shoestring Theory is a fast-paced, intelligent, lovers to enemies, friends to enemies, and all of that over again in reverse, tale of sorcery and betrayal. After the death of their parents, the young Prince Eufretes and Princess Tigris face rule, alliances, and more than one double-crossing. Meanwhile, Cyril, nephew of the formidable, no-nonsense High Mage herself, discovers that he is not the only one who knows about the ritual and his ministrations, and there is more than one person who intends to stop him.

As a protagonist, Cyril is as talented as he is bumbling; not quite consistently the adept mage he would at times believe himself, and he finds it harder to re-write history than he imagined, snared almost instantly. His determination balances well with his naivety, and Tigris is a brilliant, feisty contrast to his lead as she is drawn thoroughly and unexpectedly into his meddling. The entire narrative is written with such wit and polish, as these two are propelled from one obstacle to the next, that it has to be among the most highly recommended reads of the season.