Algernon (Darth Anyan)'s Reviews > Od Magic

Before this book, my favorites of Patricia McKillip were Winter Rose and The Riddlemaster trilogy. Now, Od Magic is a serious contender to replace these two. I know I should let a few days pass , to let my enthusiasm cool and maybe do a review, but I've been thoroughly enchanted by the story here.

What threads link and draw together "a gardener, a trick monger, a sentence in an ancient scroll"? Od Magic is the journey to find out. It starts up in the northern wastes of Numis with a young man who is talented in herb lore and who carries on his shoulders the sadness of losing his loved ones to a plague. His pain turns him away from people, even from the girl who loved him, his only solace in wandering the endless forrests and getting to know every plant and creature in his land.

A visit from a magical giantess who noticed his activities puts him on the road to the capital of Numis - Kelior - and the school for wizards there.

The plot in Od Magic is one of the most straightforward I've read so far from McKillip, with interesting secondary characters dancing around each other - falling in love, trying to disover or reinvent themselves, trying to control or to be enchanted by the magical forces present in the city.

The king and his tame wizards are afraid of this magic and will do anything in their power to restrict its use, tame it and put it within well defined borders. But magic in this book, like in many others creations of the author, is an elemental force, ancient and mysterious and ungovernable.
here's a passage I love that describes it:

"They were old, older than the name of Numis. They were of a wild magic, as ancient as wind, as night. They had known the force of wind before it had a name; they had become fire before it had been tamed, when it roamed the earth at will, unconfined by hearth, candle, lantern. They, too, had wandered at will, then, power without language, shaping everything they saw, twig, bird, leaf, water, stone, earth, light."

This link between magic and the natural world is another staple of McKillip books, and I often find myself inspired after finishing one of her novels to escape from my concrete jungle and spend a few days wondering trackless forests and mountains.

Patricia McKillip quirky and melancholic style is easily recognizable from one book to another. I have a vision of her cutting and polishing each phrase with patience and a loving touch, like a geologist who picks up a grey, uninteresting pebble from the ground and polishes it until all the colours and swirls of a gemstone are drawn out of it (I am in fact a collector of such polished gemstones) .

The pleasant surprise in Od Magic is an overall note of joy, of playfull spectacle, from an author more noted for sadness and introspection. Comic relief comes from more than one direction : a truant princess more concerned about magic tricks than her impending marriage, a spinster aunt who changes her mind every other minute about said marriage festivities, a perky student who drives his teacher wild his his constant questions, a middle aged teacher with a penchant for sarcasm, and so on. Good stuff.