I started reading Celia Lake’s books just after she started publishing them, so a few years ago now. All of them are set in Albion: a society in the UK that functions parallel to regular society, because Albion citizens have magical abilities. Her books almost always combine romance, mystery, and historical fiction; Lake does a spectacular amount of research for each one (the weather on particular nights in World War 2; exact fashions in 1910…). They’ve been set from the late nineteenth century until (most recently) just post-WW2; she promises that stories set in the 1400s are also on the way (one day…). One of the things that fascinates me about Albion is the way that lives are, for most people, quite ordinary; magic helps with chores but doesn’t make doing them unnecessary. So when Lake sent me this essay about how she thinks about the place of magic in her society, I was very pleased, and it’s also made me think further about existing assistive technology in our world. (I can highly recommend all of her books; email me if you want a specific recommendation!)