Short Book Reviews: A Plague of Magic

The Fever King, by Victoria Lee (Skyscape)

I loved the premise of this Young Adult fantasy thriller: a plague has swept the former United States, in the form of a magic-carrying virus. Most who are stricken die, but those few survivors now possess magic. Refugees seeking virus-free zones add to the social upheaval. One man, Calix Lehrer, an immensely powerful magic wielder, has survived from the beginning, and now rules the nation of Carolinia from behind the throne. 

The story follows refugee Noam Álvaro through his infection with the virus, his recovery, his new magical powers, and his recruitment into a elite corps of young magicians. As such, he is lifted from the refugee slums into a life of luxury, attending private high school and one-on-one tutoring with the great Calix Lehrer.

This part of the story, with echoes of Harry Potter but also Noam’s loyalty to the memory of his father and the refugees who were once his own people, drew me into the world. Slowly Noam makes friends, including the charismatically brilliant, beautiful boy, Dana, for whom Noam develops a passionate crush. The burgeoning attraction between the two was handled with sensitivity and forthrightness, as was Dana’s anguish about the secrets he is forced to keep.

As the story progressed, however, it seemed to lose the moral compass that was so much a part of the earlier part. Often fictional characters may seem to be either good or bad and then turn out to be the opposite or a complex blend. That’s true in this book as well. However, certain actions remain in one category or the other, especially for younger readers. Among them are a protagonist committing deliberate murder and the sexual exploitation of a young person by an older, far more powerful person. I don’t mean that these things cannot appear in YA literature, but that they must have appropriate context and consequences. They are not, and must not be, morally neutral. Perhaps other readers will feel differently about how these issues were depicted, but I found myself with the equivalent of an ethical hangover after finishing what was otherwise an engrossing tale.

Today's Moment of Art

Armand Guillaumin (1841-1927)

The Tajji Diaries: A Story of Her Own

This blog was first posed in 2015. Tajji has since gone over the Rainbow Bridge, but her spirit remains with us. I read an excerpt from this story, "Four Paws To Light My Way" at FogCon last year.

Tajji, our elderly German Shepherd Dog, came to live with us a little over a year ago when she retired from seeing eye guide dog work. She learned new behaviors in the process of “being just a dog.” Her behavior also showed us some of the many things dogs who help the blind must learn. Some of these are responses to commands. Tajji knows “Go Right,” “Go Left,” “Easy (slow down),” and “Back,” for instance. She was also able to enter a mall (a chaotic place for a dog) with her blind person and, never having been in this place before, guide him to an elevator, escalator, or rest room.

We also noticed other behaviors from her training. She would remain lying down in the same place after we had stepped over her, touching her. Not moving would allow a blind person to remember where she is (and not trip over her, at least, not twice.) She uses a gentle nose touch as a greeting (as do most dogs; it’s polite) but also to let us know when she has come to sit beside us. She asks for attention by touching an arm, sometimes neatly inserting her nose underneath a hand. In fact, she initiates physical contact so much we suspect she was not only trained to do so, but bred for the predisposition.

All of this got my writer’s imagination started thinking about different ways dogs can be partners with humans. Years ago, I loved watching movies about Zato-ichi, a blind swordsman in Japan. He had preternatural hearing, and his ears would twitch when he heard an enemy approach, undoubtedly a theatrical device to point out to the audience what was happening internally. Since I was preparing to write a story for Sword and Sorceress 30, the idea came to me of a blind swordswoman – and putting Tajji in the story. How would they interact? What could the dog tell my character and how? 

Short Book Reviews: Math Genius and the Disappointing Sequel

Null Set, A Cas Russell Novel, by S. L. Huang (Tor)

I loved S. L. Huang’s Zero Sum Game, and Cas Russell, whose superpower is her ability to make lightning-fast mathematical calculations. She works at such irregular and occasionally dubiously legal jobs as tracking down missing persons, and enjoys an uneasy but devoted friendship with psychopath, Rio. At the end of the first book, a world-wide mind-control conspiracy had been defeated after many struggles and reversals. Null Set picks up where Zero Sum Game left off, with Cas and her gang facing rising gang violence, the result of eliminating the aforementioned mind control, and she herself beset by newly resurfacing memories of a previous personality, and a telepath bent on trying to help her before whatever was done to her to give her those memories kills her. Confused? So was I, for much of the story.

Alas, Null Set feels like either a sequel that author hadn’t planned on or the flabby middle book of a series. Cas spends way too much time agonizing over this or that, tormented by fragmentary memories, unwilling to ask her devoted friends for help, and in general not accomplishing much. When she hits upon a solution to the looming gang war, she only ends up having to undo it because if people are now unable to feed off each other’s anger, they are equally immune to sharing hope. Suicide and addiction rates skyrocket. I found myself wondering what the point of it was, since we would end up right back where we started.

It felt as if the ideas and plot of a novella or maybe an even shorter novelette got stretched out into novel length. I’d loved feisty, independent Cas in the first book, but now found her indecision, unwillingness to trust anyone, and general crankiness annoying. Even her very cool mathematical genius couldn’t compensate for the loss of sympathy as a character. There’s supposed to be a third book, but I think I’ll skip it and consider Zero Sum Game as a nice, tidy stand-alone.

Today's Moment of Art

Jacob van Ruisdael (1629-1682