The Magpie and the Archmage – AmberAtlas

Lightweight, Fun

Liora has vague memories of having been human. (Not much is done with that, beyond it being the all-purpose explanation for her having human-level intelligence.) Now she is a magpie, and quite content with that. Until she steals a shiny gem into which an archmage has been bound. They team up. Well, okay, it’s more an unstable alliance than a team: He wants to be freed, she wants shiny things.

There is a System - a mechanism for gaining experience and turning into skills and abilities - but it is unfair to magpies. You defeat a monster, and it yields experience and one or more glimmerstones. When you have enough experience, you can use glimmerstones to buy skills and abilities - the better ones costing more glimmerstones. But…but…glimmerstones are pretty and shiny, and it would be a crime to spend them!

The book isn’t very ambitious; it’s a fun yarn, and I’m having fun reading it.