The Human Familiar By Honor Raconteur

While Bannen had every intention of finding adventure, being yanked through a magical portal two continents away isn’t quite what he imagined happening. For that matter, being magically bound to a mage-in-training hadn’t ever crossed his mind. 

Being the first human familiar ever summoned in Corcoran? Not on his to-do list.

Rena certainly needs all of the help that she can get, as her magic is very different, inhibiting her of the normal shields and protections. Everyone says her summoning a human familiar is a mistake, that she needs to break the bond and send Bannen back.

But Bannen doesn’t like this idea, not one iota. Renata Rocci has the magic of a Grim Reaper, the heart of a lion, and a body too frail to keep up with either. She can face assassins; meddlesome mages; politicians; and legendary, nightmarish monsters without flinching. Without losing and that’s sexy as sin. 

This is definitely not the adventure he signed up for. 

It’s far, far better.

Top Reviews

Better then the Elephant in the Room By Jay Dominguez

So I would like to address the elephant in the room before I get to my review. The unsettling similarity in the plotline of 'The Human Familiar' and the anime 'Familiar of Zero'. When I read the title of this book and read that the title of the next book was 'The Void Magician' I was actually afraid for the first time to read an Honor Raconteur book because I didn't want to read a rehash of that horrible anime. So to all of you who watched/read the manga of the 'Familiar of Zero' and hated it be assured that while Raconteur did use the same premise as the anime, a magician in training with notoriously unruly and destructive magic accidently bonds to a human from a foreign land while trying to summon an animal familiar, Raconteur's story is much better and does more justice to the characters then the anime ever did.

Hatch 'Bannen' Xian Liang is a young man looking for adventure, and was willing to sneak out of his home to do it. He just didn't expect that adventure would find him in the form of a pretty young magician who summoned him to be her familiar as part of the tests required for all magicians to pass to get their certification. Renata 'Rena' Rocci knew that the spell to summon a familiar to her would be difficult since it was precariously close to creation magic, which she is horrible at, so she spent months working on the spell only for her magic to get out of hand anyway and summon a human. Never in the history of magic in her country had a magician summoned a human as a familiar, it is unprecedented as is her magic acting against her conscience volition to complete the bonding spell without her speaking the words. While Bannen is fine with the way things turned out, though a little confused by the emotions that seem to stem from the bond between them, Rena is completely apologetic and embarrassed by the gaff. She, and the other magicians around her, are also horrified because magical bonding between two people, especially without the consent of both parties, is considered heinous and a form of slavery, but even though the Magical Council order the Bannen and Rena sever their bond and return Bannen to his home both are reluctant to do so. Add in assassins, a bully sabotaging Rena, a mysterious illness, and a monster thought to be myth corrupting plants and animals with dark magic and you have a recipe for a good story.

What makes this story better then the anime is the characters themselves. Rena is a sweet girls who is justifiable upset by summoning a human familiar, but she doesn't take it out on Bannen the way Louise did to Saito after summoning him in the anime. Rena also doesn't treat Bannen as anything other then the intelligent human being he is, and the surrounding characters who know about the summoning all express dismay for Bannen's 'plight' and insist that the only right thing to do is to have the bond broken and him sent home. The thought that Bannen might be being coerced to stay with Rena upsets and concerns them, where as the side characters of the anime show no concern at all for the male protagonists plight or the think that Saito might want to go home.

Bannen, for his part, is not concerned. Sure being teleported two continents away and being emotionally bound to another person wasn't in his plans for that day, but since he was looking for adventure anyway he wasn't going to complain about the form that adventure comes in. And while Bannen isn't a magician he does have a basic understanding of magic and the intuitive sense that while Rena hadn't consciously summoned him her magic chose him to be her familiar for a reason. A theory that was later vindicated when Bannen observed the many ways he could aide Rena in her work and protect her in a way an animal familiar just wouldn't be able to. He also knows himself well enough to know that while a good portion of his protectiveness and goodwill towards Rena probably stemmed from the bond between them he also genuinely liked Rena and wanted to stay with her despite the bond.

So in summary it is another solid book by Honor Raconteur with likable characters, magic, and a larger then life plot that isn't resolved in this book, but will hopefully be tackled again in the next. I will definitely be buying 'The Void Magician' and am happy that the story wont be long coming.

Honor Raconteur knocks it out of the park again! Another great start to another fun series! By Allison T.

When I first read the title of this book I thought to myself, "I can't imagine how anyone could pull off a premise like this without making things awkward... but if anyone can do it, she can." And I was so right! Ms. Raconteur has a rare talent for writing likeable, decent people who are trying to do the best they can with what they've been given. Even when they're given things (or people) they'd never imagined.

Potentially awkward scenes are handled promptly by lead characters through the vastly under-used (especially in fiction) technique known as "talking it out right away instead of stewing." This lets us get on to the next part of the story cleanly and respectfully... instead of making supposedly smart characters assume or lie all over the place, and using that as a mechanism to force the story along.

Now that I think about it, this cleanness is a feature of all Ms. Raconteur's writing. And probably a good part of why she's one of my favorite authors. In a genre full of grey areas, deceit, shame, and trickery, it's refreshing to read an author whose characters are unashamedly exactly what they appear. And strong people BECAUSE of it, not in spite of it.

I eagerly look forward to the sequel, Void Mage, which is (according to the author herself) already well on its way to a planned release of "before the end of the year"!

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