Mirrorfall (Require: Cookie) – Grace McDermott

The author has done something difficult and done it well. She has built a magical world that sits alongside our own - but we see it through Stef’s eyes.

Stef is broken. She’s extremely intelligent, but has negligible social skills. Her voices have more common sense than she does - and she’s lucky to have the benefit of their advice. When she is found in the wrong place at the wrong time, she is recruited by the Agency - an as-it-were-magical Men-In-Black organization.

McDermott makes it work. Stef is broken in a way that has left her sense of wonder intact. She’s not a very good Recruit, but she is an excellent lens through which to see the partly-magical-partly-high-tech-partly-grubby world in which she finds herself.