Tag Archives: Magic

Freaking Awesome

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Saw the light shimmer around him , heard the voice clear and cool in his head . I’m Flynn .

“His name is Flynn.”

“Huh? How do you know?”

“He just told me. He has elfin blood.”

“He has … He’s an elf?” Mouth gaping open, Eddie swiveled around to look back . “Like , you know , Will Ferrell in the movie?”

With a delight he’d all but forgotten,  Max laughed. “Christ, Eddie, you never fail me. No , not like that. He’s magickal, and I have a strong feeling if we’d had any thoughts about causing trouble back there, we wouldn’t be driving away with supplies and propane.”

“Ain’t that some shit? I met a fucking elf. Well, I guess he’ll be all right then . And he’s got that big dog, too.”

“That’s not a dog. His name says what he is. Lupa. Wolf.”

“Now you’re shitting me. You’re not shitting me,” Eddie realized . “I gave a Milk-Bone to a wolf? I petted a wolf? That is freaking awesome! ”

“It’s a brave new world , Eddie.” Max made the turn at the bend . “It’s a brave new fucking world.”

–Year One (Chronicles of The One) by Nora Roberts

Irish Female Shamans

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When Auntie Shea came from Ireland, she only spoke Gaelic . She found her way to Bloody Plank Road by going from firehouse to firehouse and asking directions. ( She apparently discovered that at least one fireman was a recent Irish immigrant, who spoke Gaelic, or they could point to someone in the community familiar with Gaelic.)

Steve’s family saw their Auntie Shea as more than a relative; she embodied the sense of place , stories , magic , religious fervor, aphorisms, and arcane powers of Ireland. It seemed that only women of Irish descent had these powers, which may have come from Viking lore or Druidic traditions. She knew how to apply the secret knowledge to keep the evil spirits at bay and was rarely baffled by anything, whether it was tragic or comic , that could knock someone’s life off course. She seemed to always have a ready explanation to cover good , sad , or bad news ; and in Irish neighborhoods , there was a surfeit of the latter two. As anyone familiar with these Irish female shamans knows , they can deal with anything . There was always a pinch of salt to be thrown , a saying that fit the moment, or an appropriate prayer to beseech guardian angels or the saints to help in time of need .

–Steve Hannagan: Prince of the Press Agents and Titan of Modern Public Relations by Michael K. Townsley

 

Book Review: Adventure and Mundane Magic

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Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic creates a world that looks and operates a lot like ours, with one big exception – magic is real and everyone has some level of ability.

Since the world runs on magic, getting into a really good university requires both exceptional magical skill and strong academic ability.

Gooseberry Bluff Community College is not a particularly good school. Yet, there’s very powerful magic located on and around the school grounds; which is why the people who work there aren’t always what they appear.

The novel takes the reader on an adventure where bad guys from another dimension use a magic-wielding cult-like collection of community college professors as the key for entry into the Gooseberry dimension. If the bad guys get through, the very-similar-to-our-own world will be viciously invaded and transformed into something terrible (in a post-apocalyptic kind of way).

While the story is well told, with a plot that provides ample opportunity for adventure and intrigue, the truly unique aspect to this novel is Joy, the main character – a black woman with exceptional magic skills and a life-long struggle with Prosopagnosia, the inability to distinguish or recognize human faces (including her own).

Joy was recruited to work for a secret agency that greatly resembles the FBI or the CIA, despite her handicap, because her magic skills and knowledge are exceptional. She also has the ability to read auras, which she uses in place of reading faces; s system that works just fine, most of the time.

Another interesting element is the description of magic. There are characters who compete in magic martial-arts competitions where laser-light-shows and smoke machines are utilized to show where the magic is flying through the air. In this world, the combatants don’t need to see the magic attacks because they can feel every move. It’s the audience who needs the light show – to make watching the combat easier.

Tossed in here and there are the personalities of characters who cross-over into this world from other dimensions. They provide a fascinating contrast to the personalities of the Gooseberry Bluff natives, many of which are complicated and nicely fleshed out.

All in all, this is a fun read. If you are looking for some vacation-time entertainment, I highly recommend this novel

–Gooseberry Bluff Community College of Magic by David J. Schwartz

Quotes from this book can be found HERE.

Great Book, Bad Marketing

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I found the White Magic Five and DIme while browsing through eBooks. From the cover art and the description, this one looked like a nice new-age themed chic-lit novel.

It’s not.

It’s nothing at all like that.

Just to be clear: I really enjoyed this book.

Unfortunately, this novel suffers from extraordinarily poor marketing, beginning with the description:

Much to Alanis McLachlan’s surprise, her estranged con-woman mother has left her an inheritance: The White Magic Five & Dime, a shop in tiny Berdache, Arizona. Reluctantly traveling to Berdache to claim her new property, Alanis decides to stay and pick up her mother’s tarot business in an attempt to find out how she died.

With help from a hunky cop and her mother’s live-in teenage apprentice, Alanis begins faking her way through tarot readings in order to win the confidence of her mother’s clients.  But the more she uses the tarot deck, the more Alanis begins to find real meaning in the cards … and the secrets surrounding her mother’s demise.

This sounds like standard chic-lit with a bit of a low-key family mystery thrown in for dramatic effect. In reality, the book is about Alanis, a woman who survived a harrowing childhood at the hands of hardened criminals. She manages to escape by conning her con-artist mother but can’t shake the law of the street. Well into adulthood, Alanis is convinced she owes her mother a heavy debt. When a lawyer locates Alanis to pass along the news that mom has not only been murdered but left behind an inheritance in her name, she decides it’s time to pay back her debt by finding the killer and exacting revenge street-style. Alanis does this knowing that there is a very strong possibility that her mother is using the inheritance to set-up her estranged daughter for some hardcore revenge post-mortem.

The fact that Alanis has been living in secret, under an assumed name, with her every move entirely focused on not being found by her mother, makes the letter-from-the lawyer even more interesting.

That’s where this book begins.

It’s a murder mystery set in a small town with a woman cast as the primary hard-hitting tough-as-nails mystery-solving hero. The new-age magic and tarot cards are merely part of the story because…and only because…that was the narcissistic mother’s last con-game.

This book reminded me of the  V I Warshawski books by Sara Paretsky. I’ve posted quotes from both Hockensmith and Paretsky to this blog – go ahead and compare the two!

I really enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it, but ignore the marketing material – here is a more accurate description:

The White Magic Five & Dime is hard-hitting murder mystery featuring tough people with difficult lives. There’s abuse, neglect, and extremely non-motherly actions; but there is also a solved mystery, adventure and….ultimately…a daughter who manages to put the ghost of her mother to rest.

Daydreams Are Forever

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And when you leave you learn the thing that all day dreamers learn: when you leave the realm of magic beasts, they wait for your return.

–Day Dreamers by Emily Winfield Martin

The Bright Side

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Later, after they had cleared as much brown goo out of the cottage as they could, Aunt Zelda surveyed the damage, determined to look on the bright side. “It’s really not so bad,” she said. “The books are fine—well, at least they will be when they’ve all dried out and I can redo the potions. Most of them were coming up to their drink-by date anyway. And the really important ones are in the Safe. The Brownies didn’t eat all the chairs like last time, and they didn’t even poo on the table. So, all in all, it could have been worse. Much worse.

–Septimus Heap, Book One: Magyk by Angie Sage

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Definition of a Witch

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The word witch has many meanings in the United States, some good and some bad. The historic usage as a slur for people who practice earth-based religions or anyone practicing herbal medicine or midwifery, has resulted in unfortunate misunderstandings and excuses for senseless violence. For more information about the Pagan community and it’s use of the term ‘Witch’ see: Witches’ Vox, Starhawk, and History of Witch Burnings.

The following quote describes a very specific cultural perspective based on a definition that falls under the ‘bad witch’ category. It is not a reference to modern Paganism or the US history of witch burnings. It’s also a quote from a novel – only members of the Navajo nation could say, definitely, how accurate this information really is.

I went back and forth on these quotes and ultimately decided to post them because they are a wonderful example of the style used by this author and an excellent segment of descriptive color in a work of fiction. Also, I do not see anything racially or culturally offensive in the quote.

If there are problems in the presentation of the Navajo culture or additional issues surrounding the use of the word witch, then they are valid concerns and worthy of further discussion. If I am blind to a problem, I invite you to open my eyes. Feel free to add comments accordingly.

Quotes:

“And finally Chee had accumulated a general impression of Windy Tsossie. It was a negative impression. His kinsmen and his clansmen, when they admitted remembering him at all, remembered him without fondness or respect. They talked of him reluctantly, vaguely, uneasily. No one put it in words. Since Chee was Navajo, no one needed to. Windy Tsossie did not “go in beauty.” Windy Tsossie was not a good man. He did not follow those rules which Changing Woman had given the People. In a word, Windy Tsossie was believed by his kinsmen to be a witch.”

“To become a witch, to cross over from Navajo to Navajo Wolf, you have to break at least one of the most serious taboos. You have to commit incest, or you have to kill a close relative. But there’s another story, very old, pretty much lost, which explains how First Man became a witch. Because he was first, he didn’t have relatives to destroy. So he figured out a magic way to violate the strongest taboo of all. He destroyed himself and recreated himself, and that’s the way he got the powers of evil.”

–People of Darkness (Navajo Mysteries Book 4) by Tony Hillerman

Proud Humility

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“She makes amends the same way she goes into battle. Gods help the fool who gets in her way.”

–Fire Logic (Elemental Logic) by Laurie J. Marks

 

Stillness

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“There is a stillness that comes across the earth sometimes, at dawn, or just before a storm, a stillness as if the entire world lies stunned by possibility.”

–Fire Logic (Elemental Logic) by Laurie J. Marks