A Resurrection of Magic is a trilogy created by Kathleen Duey. Each book consists of two plots, set several centuries apart.
Sadima lives in a world where magic has been banned, leaving poor villagers prey to fakes and charlatans. A "magician" stole her family's few valuables and left Sadima's mother to die on the day Sadima was born. But vestiges of magic are hidden in old rhymes and hearth tales and in people like Sadima, who conceals her silent communication with animals for fear of rejection and ridicule. When rumors of her gift reach Somiss, a young nobleman obsessed with restoring magic, he sends Franklin, his lifelong servant, to find her. Sadima's joy at sharing her secret becomes love for the man she shares it with. But Franklin''s irrevocable bond to the brilliant and dangerous Somiss traps her, too, and she faces a heartbreaking decision.
Centuries later, magic has been restored, but it is available only to the wealthy and is strictly controlled by wizards within a sequestered academy of magic. Hahp, the expendable second son of a rich merchant, is forced into the academy and finds himself paired with Gerrard, a peasant boy inexplicably admitted with nine sons of privilege and wealth. Only one of the ten students will graduate — and the first academic requirement is survival.
This trilogy contains examples of:
- All-Loving Hero: Towards the second book Sadima begins to be likened to Erides, the beloved prophet of the Eridians who preached equality and showed nothing but kindness.
- Affably Evil: Franklin, in Haph's story. He's kind to the students, but still lets them suffer in the academy.
- Break the Haughty: Haph quickly learns that his pampered life puts him at a disadvantage when stood next to his street rat roommate, while Gerrard eventually encounters an assignment he can't complete on his own and is forced to agree to a pact with Haph.
- Dark Messiah: Somiss starts out claiming that his efforts to restore magic will end poverty and cure all illnesses. Upon successfully bringing magic back he and his fellow wizards proceed to not only ignore the plight of those who can't pay an arm and a leg, but to torture and kill over 90% of the people who come to learn from them.
- Healing Shiv - Jux heals Haph in the second book by kicking him.
- Nerves of Steel: Gerrard is the only student at the wizard aceademy not to be shocked upon learning that the wizards will not only let them die if they can't learn, but are counting on at least ten of them biting it. Everything else thrown at the kids he takes with an uncanny level head.
- Sadist Teacher: The wizards. The nicest of them only gives the students a vague idea of how not to starve to death, and still lets four die. The harshest is pleased to see them fail whatever task he's made a requirement for being able to get food.
- The Unfettered:
- Nothing stops Somiss's research. He will even go hungry if it means being able to afford the paper to record his work.
- Gerrard's determination to graduate from the wizard academy is no less impressive.
