I've read several books like this recently with a kind of pasted-on magical-shop thing, and I have to wonder whether there is not some workshop somewhere that people are attending, or an article they're reading or something. Because this has to be the sixth or seventh in the past half-year. Some of the books I've read have been in translation but all have been very recent (past two-three years for the translations). None of them have made very good use, IMO, of the magic-shop element, or explored it; it's only serving a larger melodrama (Until the Coffee Gets Cold, I am side-eyeing you so hard).
There is a long lineage of magical-shop stories, and of course very few come with explanations, but these recent works all have a very similar blandness and a similar lack of real depth.
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Date: 2025-02-18 06:21 pm (UTC)There is a long lineage of magical-shop stories, and of course very few come with explanations, but these recent works all have a very similar blandness and a similar lack of real depth.