Good Setup, but a Disappointing Ending

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	• Od Magic Patricia A. McKillip Ace Trade, 2006 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

FABulous

What a great book! Kind of a "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" for the fantasy set. Lovely detail, likeable characters and an engaging story.

A great summer read. Get a lemonade and go find the hammock.

lyrical prose

I really liked this story because it described people and events just enough to let the reader's imagination draw a picture and fill in the blanks. The charaters were well defined and there was no clear cut "good" or "evil," only foolish and controling authority figures who lacked the ability to view the unknown without feeling threatened.

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Good Setup, but a Disappointing Ending

As a fan of Patricia McKillip's work (The Tower at Stony Wood and The Song for the Basilisk are among my favorite books), I have to admit that I was a little disapointed in Od Magic.

The story introduces us to Brenden Vetch, a young man whose talent with herbs enables him to save most of his village from a plague. The first chapter describes this, as well as giving background on how both his brother Jode and his lover Meryd left him to pursue a happier place. From the very beginning, Patricia McKillip skillfully captures the sense of sorrow in a young man burdened by sorrow, loneliness, and grief, with no company but his plants.

Enter Od, a grey-haired giantess around whom the animals she has healed will flock, who asks Brenden to come to her school to teach the others what he has learned. He agrees to do so, and through a bizarre chain of events, manages to throw the entire kingdom into chaos that forces the king and his counselor to reconsider the relationship between political power and knowledge of magic.

Like many of her books, a colorful cast of supporting characters surround Brenden, often overshadowing him as the main character. In a way, Yar Ayrwood could also be considered a main character, as he actively influences the direction the events take and manages to tie almost all the characters together. Because of this, I found him much more interesting than Brenden who does very little of interest between arriving at the school and leaving the capital city of Kelior, and seems to be more of a plot device than a character who shows major development throughout the course of the novel. I definitely feel that Yar is the strongest character in this novel, and he shows the mix of cynicism and wry humor that I've come to love in Patricia McKillip's supporitng cast. Like Brenden, Yar arrived at the school a poor young man with a powerful magic that he didn't understand. After saving the city he had come to in search of understanding the wonderous powers he had given, he was asked to pass under "the door with the shoe" on Od's bidding, and was the only person to do so in 79 years until Brenden Vetch arrived nineteen years later. During that time span, he had become a teacher, teaching as the king orders and enforcing his orders and laws, but always wondering if magic should be something more. At one point in the novel, Wye, the head of the school, tells him to be careful. His response struck a chord with me: "I have been for nineteen years. That's long enough."

The complete opposite of Yar is Valoren Greye, a former student of his who has become the king's counselor. Perhaps because I am a student, I loved the characteriziation of Valoren, who had come to the school young and filled with wonder but left stern, vapid, expressionless, desiring only to mindlessly serve society and please the king. I loved how on our first meeting of the young wizard, Yar recounts, "He remembered a time when Valoren knew how to smile." However, I found his character change at the end of the novel construed and not believable, and as a reader I felt that there was no indication that he would not revert back to his old ways.

Another character is Tyramin, a magician/illusionist who enchants the Twilight Quarter, an area of town which wizards are forbidden to go to for fear that they will become inspired to sedition. Although this at first seems like a random side plot, it showcases Patricia McKillip's wonderful ability to describe magic, and in her typical fashion, the author manages to wave this into a tangled plot with the central one. Her desriptions are especially wonderful as they capture the essence of Mistral, the magician's daughter, a solemn, quiet, but strong-willed young lady filled with magic and talent. I wish that Arneth Pyt, the quarter warden, had been fleshed in more detail, so that he would not have to seem flat and vapid besides her. Nonetheless, Mistral's role when Brenden Vetch ventures into the Twilight Quarter in search of events adds to the intriguing plot.

Another side plot revolves around Princess Sulys, daughter of the king and a princess from a faraway kingdom where magic is common. Although at first I admired her curious spirit, I soon found her very irritable, two-dimensional, and cliche, as she constantly whines about her unhappiness at her proposed marriage to Valoren and her lack of friends. As such a predicament is common among young ladies in the fantasy world (including this one, as exemplified by both Lady Dittany, Sulys's grandmother, and Ceta, Yar's lover and Sulys's eventual friend), I found her inability to accept her fate annoying and had little sympathy for her plights. Also difficult to sympathize with is Elver, a student who seems slightly arrogant and is always getting into trouble. There are reasons for this that become clear late in the novel, but I think his character could have been better executed so as to not be annoying.

In the end, Sulys is central to the resolution of conflict. However, I was extremely disappointed in this, as I felt her role in the conflict resolution could have easily been carried by Arneth Pyt and Mistral. Moreover, this side plot itself was, even in the king's words, a "moot point", after the main one was resolved. I was not sure what the function of the beings on Skygard Mountain were other than to instill terror, and I found myself bothered by how readily almost all characters expressed a complete change in philosophy merely because of a single event that had transpired (even Brenden, who several chapters before was shown fleeing the city in terror of pursuit). The moral of the story also felt cliched, and I was left with the feeling that despite the intriguing and multi-threaded plot, the lasting impression that the book made was minimal.

I would definitely not recommend this book if you have never read Patricia McKillip's books. I wouldn't go as far to say to not read it, as much of the first two-thirds of the book are very enjoyable and as enchanting as her others, but I think a reader who is familiar with her work must be prepared to be very disappointed by the end.

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Marvelous

Back when I was a kid, Patricia McKillip really knocked me out with her Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy. Then a bunch of years got by me and I sort of lost track of her. Recently I've been on a rampage of rediscovery. She has several very loosely related volumes, including this one -- no connection among the story lines, but they have a distinctive style that sort of ties them together. They are all fabulous.

McKillip has a lyrical writing style that has a poetic rhythm to it that for me calls to mind Dylan Thomas's work. I love how she anchors her imagery in sea, stone, fire and wind. You just can't write fantasy any better than this. If you're a fan of the genre, this is must reading. Even if you're not typically a fantasy reader, you'll be hooked by McKillip's stuff.

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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