Everything Has a Price

While the novel focuses on the consequences of magic, it is clear that everything has a price. Actions or inactions can have terrible repercussions. Power and ambition risks violence and chaos, and life always leads to death.

As mentioned before, the novel focuses heavily on the consequences of magic. Every ritual in this story has repercussions, whether to the users directly by taking years of their lives, or on the world around them. Arrah describes those who give years for years as magic early in the novel to establish how much they are actually losing. The first is the woman she meets in the forest as “magic lights on her skin, and she writes and thrashes against the sand. Her mouth twists into an ugly scream” (9). Secondly are the charlatans (the name for those without magic) in the east market. This time, a...