Book Review: Origins: The Secret Agent

One of two action-packed short story prequels to Barry Ryerson’s The Magic Circle.

I really enjoyed reading The Magic Circle. I thought it was a really solid, action-packed adventure, mixing magic and sci-fi in a believable way. You can read my full review of it here. So naturally, eager for more in this universe, I was excited to delve into the two short story prequels, starting with Origins: The Secret Agent. I like the idea of these short prequels, as they allow the reader to have not just more of what they loved from the main story, but to go deeper into the backstory of some of the characters, and The Secret Agent provides some of that for Yevgeny.

Blurb

Decades after nuclear war, magic returns.

For Yevgeny Arafyev, this means using his powers to help the Russian Orthodox Church as a secret agent. Though young, he is chosen for his first mission: recruit a girl who, like him, is gifted with powers.

Or kill her if she refuses.

Follow Yevgeny on his first mission as he does whatever it takes to not fail for once.

Review

It was great to get some more backstory for Yevgeny, one of the main POV characters from The Magic Circle. Here we meet him years before the events of the main story, about to embark on his first mission for the Russian Orthodox Church and struggling for the acceptance of his peers. Yevgeny is a complex character, morally grey, ruthless, and desperate.

I enjoyed his arc in this story as he goes from humble beginnings failing over and over again at training, to being thrust into the true dangers of a real-life mission. As in The Magic Circle his role is to find people with magical abilities and convince them to join the church in their mission, or to kill them if they refuse.

His mark in this story is a relatively minor character who shows up in The Magic Circle, but who has remarkable abilities that makes the mission a lot harder than he first thought it would be. The adventure was great fun, and it truly showed the dangers of the post-apocalyptic environment that the series is set in. Although I wasn’t completely sold on the ending. I wonder if the character he went after wasn’t quite the right character for this—it provided a solid tie into the main novel, but it swapped a truly satisfying conclusion for intrigue. It would certainly make me want to read The Magic Circle if I hadn’t already, so in that sense, it accomplished what it was meant to do. But that doesn’t quite work in the other direction.

I’d still highly recommend it, though. Barry’s writing is very vivid and enjoyable, and Yevgeny is a stellar character.