44 pages • 1 hour read
Sarah Beth DurstThe Spellshop
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Kiela, a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, discovers that the library has been set on fire by revolutionaries. She and her assistant, Caz, an animate spider plant, have spent the past week preparing for such an outcome by moving valuable spellbooks into boats for evacuation, though she didn’t believe that violence would ever come there. Forced to flee, Kiela and Caz take one of the boats away from the uprising. Once out on the ocean, Kiela relaxes and enjoys the sight of merhorses nearby. Caz, however, is anxious about plant-eating fish. They make their way to Kiela’s home island of Caltrey. She and her family left when she was very young, but she still owns her family’s cottage there.
Chapter 2 Summary
Chapter 3 Summary
Once Larran is gone, Caz comes out of hiding. They discuss the stranger and begin to settle in. Kiela is particularly concerned with taking care of her stolen books. She moves the books in from the boat while Caz helps tidy. They go through Kiela’s parents’ leftover belongings, and Kiela begins to feel optimistic about her future. However, she quickly realizes that they’re not self-sufficient; they’ll need to procure money and food. She prepares for her first intimidating trip into town.
Chapter 4 Summary
The next morning, Larran returns and leaves them a basket of food. Kiela is grateful though resistant to his presence. She attempts to make a fire but only ends up creating a lot of smoke. Once the embers are quenched, Kiela summons her confidence to go to town. She leaves Caz behind since he might make the townspeople suspicious. On her way, she sees Larran guiding a group of merhorses. Once in town, Kiela is surprised to see signs of poverty and decline everywhere. She finds a bakery crowded with people and becomes anxious at the crowd and the attention. The baker and proprietor, Bryn, greets her warmly and welcomes her to the island.
Chapter 5 Summary
Bryn helps furnish Kiela with provisions and food and explains that the town has fallen into disrepair due to neglect from sorcerers in the capital city. Kiela returns home to find Caz and Larran talking companionably. Larran explains that he came to fix her clogged chimney and offers to cook them lunch. He reveals that he knew Kiela’s parents when he was young and that they showed him kindness. As they eat, Larran tells Kiela about his farm of merhorses and offers to let her ride one. Kiela is attracted to him but resistant to the idea of making friends. Finally, she berates him for coming in uninvited.
Chapter 6 Summary
The next day, Kiela attempts to organize her overgrown garden. She and Caz organize the plants by attributing them to library classifications. They plant seeds that Bryn gave them, but Caz points out that it will be a while before the seeds provide them with any food. Flummoxed, Kiela resorts to their stolen spellbooks. She finds one for accelerated plant growth, and she and Caz perform it over some of their seeds. Once they finish, they hear Larran calling from inside.
Chapter 7 Summary
Larran apologizes for his forwardness earlier. Kiela apologizes in return, but she panics because her unsanctioned spellwork is still strewn about the garden. To make him leave quickly, she agrees to ride his merhorses. Caz pushes them both out the door. They go to the water’s edge near his cottage, and Larran calls a merhorse named Sian. He helps Kiela mount the merhorse before calling his own, and they ride on the waves together. Larren reveals that the merhorses are dwindling because they can’t give birth without the help of magicians. Kiela returns home and discovers that her plants have grown large in a short amount of time. She decides that she and Caz are going to open a shop for magical help to earn the money they need.
Chapters 1-7 Analysis
The opening section begins with the inciting incident and the novel’s only real foray into the epic cataclysms of traditional high fantasy. When Kiela escapes the chaos rising around her, she also figuratively escapes the expectations of these genre conventions. This is communicated through a shift in tone as well as a change in setting: “The Great Library of Alyssium, with its soaring spires, stained-glass windows, and labyrinthine bookshelves” (1), is quickly juxtaposed against “a gloriously beautiful day for a sail. Light breeze. Cheerful lemon light flashing on the water. Seagulls fl[ying] overhead, cawing to one another” (8). In addition to the contrasting imagery, the second example uses simpler, more compact language to convey the languid atmosphere. From this point forward, the stakes become more localized and interpersonal, and Kiela begins a path of healing she didn’t know she needed.
The opening chapters also serve to establish the unconventional friendship between Kiela and Caz, one of the strongest guiding threads throughout the novel. Though they each make new connections and even come into conflict with one another, their relationship never falters. Their attitudes to the world around them are contrasted: Kiela is lighthearted and stubbornly optimistic, while Caz is anxious and unafraid to voice his thoughts. Together, they balance each other’s flaws. Once they arrive on the island and settle into their dilapidated new home, another character is introduced to disrupt the dynamic. Larran accosts them in an act of misguided heroism, cementing one of the core tenets of Kiela’s new environment: “Outer islanders care for our own” (17). The Value of Kinship and Community that he expresses here becomes an important element later in both plot development and character development for Kiela. His appearance also incites a growing attraction in Kiela amid her anxiety and mistrust.
Once Larran leaves, Kiela and Caz begin renovating the cottage to make it habitable. This becomes a solid team effort between the two friends, with each leaving their mark on the home. This moment illustrates how the concept of “home” in the novel is something bigger than a tangible structure; the cottage becomes their home because of the shared effort they put into it. Kiela and Caz also begin to tackle their garden space, which is as restorative as it is productive. They organize the plants based on literary designations that were in use at the library. In doing so, they bring a piece of the life they left behind into their new home. The physical acts of planting and giving each plant a role in their new “library” help bond them to the land in a deeper and more nuanced way. This connection with the land becomes central to the trajectory of the plot, and them creating their living space and starting their garden emphasizes the theme of Rebirth and New Beginnings that will carry throughout the novel.
Soon, Kiela and Caz realize that they’re going to have to venture into society for their new home to be sustainable. This begins the rising action of the story in which new threads and characters are introduced. Kiela’s venture into town, and her encounter of “everyone” in it, drastically clashes with her established comfort zone: “And if she were being honest, it was less than a dozen people, but it felt like everyone. Six times the number of people she’d wanted to see” (37). This moment shows how much Kiera will need to challenge herself to make things work in her new life. As a reward for valiantly facing her fears, Kiela is given her first real friend on the island, Bryn, and a stock of provisions. Later, Bryn helps by giving Kiela useful business advice. In this way, Bryn functions as the archetypal mentor figure in the hero’s journey story structure, furnishing the protagonist with knowledge and tools necessary to take the next step forward. However, not everything is ideal on the island; in Chapter 5, Kiela begins to understand the first hints of the island’s troubles due to the political turmoil she recently escaped. At one point, she recalls a horrific punishment for an islander who broke the law. This motivates many of her actions later in the novel.
The following chapters serve to deepen Kiela’s relationships with her home and with Larran. Larran reappears twice: The first time, he takes the liberty of helping her with her chimney and gets himself a lunch date in return. Despite his good intentions, his upbringing in a close-knit community clashes with the boundaries of Kiela’s city living. Their next encounter goes much more smoothly as they shift their relationship off Kiela’s protected space and onto his own territory. As often occurs in romance novels, their date is Kiela’s means to an end—she agrees to distract him from the illegal activities happening in her cottage. However, her utilitarian choice ends up being a positive one as she and Larran bond over the experience. She also learns of the merhorse blight that’s damaging the local economy. In conjunction with her earlier recollection of the islanders’ difficulties and her need for income, she’s inspired to make magic more accessible. She decides to open a spellshop that promotes Free Knowledge for the People despite the legal risks, an idea that will put the story’s primary conflict into action.
