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Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher.
Apr. 2nd, 2020 01:58 pmSometimes one just wants a sensible talking armadillo. Not enough people write those.
This one is accompanying his mage on a journey to find the Cloud Herders, to bring back rain and break the village's drought. His mage, Oliver, is called minor because he only knows three spells, and also because he is twelve, so that's a bit of a tall order.
It's a dark story in some ways. Oliver's fellow villagers aren't giving him any choice about whether to go or not: he's their mage, and they're scared, so he's the one who'll have to get the rain. Humans can act worse than usual when supported by consensus, and sometimes they do evil things all on their own, and there are other creatures than humans in this world, some of which are consistently worse. But it's only dark enough to make me believe in its light. Although there's pain and death, Oliver does his best, and his best gets better, and though that won't fix everything it will damn well fix some things. I thought of Terry Pratchett, for the groups-behaving-worse-than-people, for the value of small-scale community magic, and for the combination of wonder with pragmatism: one of Oliver's three spells, 'push-me pull-me', is described as 'not much like having an invisible extra hand but very much like having an invisible extra foot', which immediately defines pretty much everything the spell can and can't do.
And T.Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is very good at animals. Summer In Orcus had a weasel. This book has the armadillo, who is magically human-like, finds humans basically frustrating in their tendency to worry about things they can't control, and is a voice of sense and kindness whether frustrated or not. There are also pigs, who don't have human language at all, and are about as friendly, as willing to help, and as dangerous as pigs generally are.
I read this late at night when my mind was buzzing and I couldn't face the thought of any of the books I was in the middle of; it was a good choice.
This one is accompanying his mage on a journey to find the Cloud Herders, to bring back rain and break the village's drought. His mage, Oliver, is called minor because he only knows three spells, and also because he is twelve, so that's a bit of a tall order.
It's a dark story in some ways. Oliver's fellow villagers aren't giving him any choice about whether to go or not: he's their mage, and they're scared, so he's the one who'll have to get the rain. Humans can act worse than usual when supported by consensus, and sometimes they do evil things all on their own, and there are other creatures than humans in this world, some of which are consistently worse. But it's only dark enough to make me believe in its light. Although there's pain and death, Oliver does his best, and his best gets better, and though that won't fix everything it will damn well fix some things. I thought of Terry Pratchett, for the groups-behaving-worse-than-people, for the value of small-scale community magic, and for the combination of wonder with pragmatism: one of Oliver's three spells, 'push-me pull-me', is described as 'not much like having an invisible extra hand but very much like having an invisible extra foot', which immediately defines pretty much everything the spell can and can't do.
And T.Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is very good at animals. Summer In Orcus had a weasel. This book has the armadillo, who is magically human-like, finds humans basically frustrating in their tendency to worry about things they can't control, and is a voice of sense and kindness whether frustrated or not. There are also pigs, who don't have human language at all, and are about as friendly, as willing to help, and as dangerous as pigs generally are.
I read this late at night when my mind was buzzing and I couldn't face the thought of any of the books I was in the middle of; it was a good choice.
