Paul Mackinnon

Magic is easy

when you're born to it. Really! Want breakfast? Travel? Adventure? They're all a finger-snap away -- if you're a young sorcerer.

But folks who're born with the world at their fingertips face problems you and I wouldn't believe if we had to live with them.

A monster has swallowed the sky and set fire to the seas. All the skies, and all the seas. Everywhere. In the entire world? Mass hysteria, some folks are saying. This can't be! Never mind that anybody who steps outside gets snatched up by a tentacle from the sky, and if you looked up carefully (from behind a rock, maybe), you'd see them get chewed and eaten by that monster in the sky.

Somebody has to deal with it. Somebody like Toby, Leo, and Mariah . . . the sorcerers' apprentices.