Diana Gabaldon on ‘The Last Days of Magic’: a well-constructed video game on paper
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Version 0 of 1. Reading “The Last Days of Magic” is like playing a wellconstructed video game. There’s a fantastic world, built in loving detail — lots of detail — and populated by faeries (from several different clans, all mentioned scrupulously by name), to say nothing of monsters, fire sprites, Woodwose (nasty forest faeries), Fomorians (one-eyed beings who crawl out of the water to eat people), tripartite Celtic goddesses and a few dozen other magical races and creatures, many of whom interbreed with one another, just to keep things interesting. The heroes — male and female; there’s one of each, in the interests of gender equality — must hack and hew their way through multiple levels of dazzling enchantment, strangling vines, bloody demons, dark caverns and pools of inchoate slime. The only thing lacking is a soundtrack of shrieks and cartilage-rending crunches. [‘The Magician’s Land,’ the final volume of Lev Grossman’s Magicians trilogy] A good video game has an exciting storyline, and so does “The Last Days of Magic.” Set as a battle between wild-and-free ancient Magic and aggressive Religion bent on absolute control, the action focuses on Ireland, designated as the last place on Earth where real magic (known as Ardor) still flourishes in its natural form. Religion (represented — naturally — as the Roman Catholic Church) wishes to destroy all Magic in the name of power. The magical beings just want to destroy each other. Our protagonists include Jordan, an apparatchik of the church, and a handy man both with blade and enchantment. He harbors a hidden streak of magical blood that he’s careful to keep hidden from the Vatican masters who have sent him to clean up Ireland, eradicate the Ardor and claim the place for Rome. The other protagonist is Aisling, one-third of the Celtic goddess known as the Morrígna. The Morrígna manifests herself in the world as periodically reborn twin girls, Aisling and Anya, a warrior and a scholar, charged with keeping safe Ireland and the world of magic. (The trinity’s enigmatic third part, named Anann, is left twiddling her thumbs in the spirit world.) Every good story also needs a hateful antagonist, so we have King Richard II of England, who is — according to this version of history — a dissolute bisexual who first wants Ireland because he’s English and then really wants Ireland when the Great Coven of France gets him to marry a 6-year-old witch-in-training who is a lot smarter than Richard. (The Coven, of course, wants all that Irish Ardor for its own fell purposes, which we will probably hear more about in Book Two, which we feel looming on the horizon.) We also have Cardinal Orsini, who is, naturally, the personification of corruption, and, while against Magic on general principles, has no scruples about suborning demons for personal use. The story starts off well when Anya gets bumped off and has her heart eaten on Page 25 — you need the twins’ hearts intact for the next set to be inaugurated properly, so you can see Magic is already in trouble. Aisling goes into a decline from which she emerges for short periods of sex or bloodlust, but is mostly a MacGuffin, being the Only Hope for the salvation of Ireland. Ireland is in dire need of saving, what with the constant fighting among the supernatural beings and outside threats from the Church and Richard II. Let’s put it this way: The book does not suffer from any lack of plot or incident, nor of vivid, articulate writing such as this: “Drums announced the entrance of Clanvowe, who walked unchained toward his slow death. . . . Clanvowe removed his hat and gave it to one of the woodsmen, his jacket to another. He walked on, paused, pulled off his boots, hopping a bit as he moved from one leg to the other, and gave them to the third. Barefoot, he defiantly mounted the five steps up to the small platform.” The story does rather suffer, though, from a lack of dimensionality in its characters, annoying brevity of scenes that do not involve fighting, and a syndrome (common to writers both of fantasy and historical fiction) known as I’ve Done My Research and Now You’re Going to Pay. Thus, we get lists of combatants that would make Homer weep with envy and occurrences like Queen Gormflaith, mentioned on Page 247 leading her forces into battle, and again five pages later when her death is casually reported. Alas, Gormflaith, we hardly knew ye. . . . Still, it’s an honest, beautifully detailed book and an entertaining read, and no one will notice if you use the cheat code that lets you skip a battle now and then. Diana Gabaldon is the author of the Outlander series, on which the Starz TV show is based. Read more: The best new science fiction and fantasy By Mark Tompkins Viking. 400 pp. $27 |