Pleasant, readable, but a bit inconsequential

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	• Od Magic Patricia A. McKillip Ace Trade, 2006 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Od Magic

The wizard Od once protected the kingdom of Numis from destruction, thereby winning the loyalty of its kings and permission to establish a school of magic in Kelior, the royal city. Centuries later, the school has devolved into a tightly regulated institution, controlling and constricting all magic users' thought. Deciding that Numis needs a little change, Od reappears from her wanderings for the first time in 19 years and recruits the school's new gardener: the half-feral Brenden Vetch, who has immersed himself in wild Northern magic after his parents' death. Brenden, though, becomes one of only many worries for blustery King Galin. The famed magician Tyramin (whose magic may or may not be simple entertainment) appears in the nocturnal Twilight Quarter; the recalcitrant princess's small magics may become an increasing problem for her intended, the cold and too-well-trained magician Valoren. As the king and his wizards gradually begin to learn, magic will only tolerate being restricted for so long.

Patricia McKillip is one of my three favorite authors, but I didn't enjoy Od Magic quite as much as some of her earlier works. Though I still love her dreamlike, colorful style, and her elegant, understated characterization, I felt that the plot had less of a pull, with no strong direction for a great deal of the book. I kept reading the book because I liked many of the characters (particularly Mistral, Tyramin's daughter, and Yar Ayrwood, an embittered wizard-teacher) and the images of the exotic, lively city, but there was little of the real compulsion to read that I often find in her books. Though the message is clear - magic should not be feared simply because it is not understood - its driving force is diffuse.

In addition, though McKillip is extremely skilled at handling multiple viewpoints, I felt that Od Magic covered too many main characters, with 5 or 6 protagonists given nearly equal coverage in only a little over 300 pages. Brenden is ostensibly the hero, but he only appeared directly in perhaps four chapters, with the result that, at the end of the book, I still felt as if I didn't know him.

Overall, though still a lovely book and magical to read simply for the lush imagery, Od Magic doesn't stand out to me among McKillip's collection.

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Pleasant, readable, but a bit inconsequential

Patricia A. McKillip's latest novel, Od Magic, is not part of a series. But it is one of a consistent set of novels that she puts out, pretty much one per year, tidily sized (about 90,000 words in this case), tidily shaped. In Od Magic there are no bad guys, just temporarily misled people. Which isn't a bad or dishonest thing, really. But in this particular case it does sort of dull the edge of the book.

Od is a legendary female wizard, very long lived but hardly ever seen. Centuries earlier she founded a school of wizardry in Kelior, the capital city of the Kingdom of Numis. Now she appears to a young man in the North named Brenden Vetch, and asks him to go to her school to be the gardener, and to look for the door under the shoe.

I confess I expected a story about Brenden, but this isn't what McKillip was after. Instead she follows a variety of people: Brenden of course, but also the influential wizard of Od's school, Yar; his politically connected lover Ceta; the High Warden's son, another Warden (that is to say, policeman), Arneth Pyt; the King's daughter, Princess Sulys, who is about to be married to a man she doesn't know, a priggish but powerful wizard; and the small-time wizard (small-time? perhaps!) Tyramin and his enigmatic daughter. The story revolves about the King's concern about the potential abilities of Tyramin, who is not under his control, and about Sulys's desire to actually have a chance to know her husband, and moreover her desire to use certain small powers she possesses, and about Yar's concern that his school -- Od's school -- may have become hidebound, too much a tool of the King (even though the King seems for the most part a pretty good King). And also about Brenden Vetch, and his quite remarkable powers, and his connection with certain beings that have long secretly inhabited the kingdom.

It's all a very nice novel, and always readable, and full of characters you like and root for -- but at the same time it seems a bit inconsequential -- or perhaps the term is "easy". In a way I found this refreshing -- the people really are all trying to do their best, they are just often misguided -- and in all honesty that seems truer than the common evil/good divide. But that said there really isn't much tension in the novel -- or much risk. I enjoyed it, and I think most readers will. But it didn't stay with me.

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Eloquent magic...

reviewed by Sherryl King-Wilds for fantasynovelreview.com

Od the wizard roams the land, searching for wisdom and new students to add to her school of magic in the ancient city of Kelior.

Od sends a bereaved young man-Brenden Vetch-with a peculiar talent for knowing plants to the school to be a gardener. Coinciding with Brenden's arrival, Tyramin the Master of Illusions and Enchantments shows up with his troupe to perform in Kelior's Twilight Quarter-a section of the city reminiscent of New Orleans during Mardi Gras. Tyramin and his troupe are suspect as wielding true magic, a practice outlawed unless restricted within the boundaries of Od's school.

Brenden Vetch is soon caught up in Tyramin's identity and the king's ploy to arrest Tyramin. Brenden's untamed and powerful magic-sensed by another wizard-have made him suspect as well. Brenden flees Kelior. But someone powerful pursues him until the gardener vanishes, becoming part of a magic older than words.

Penned with eloquence and grace, Od Magic is not an exhausting, dynamic romp through a danger-fraught terrain. It is, instead, a relaxing tale that teaches a great lesson-learned through the story not the dialogue: not to bind new ways of thinking and doing with laws begotten by fear.

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Magic isn't always what it seems...

Brenden Vetch has spent most of his life learning to listen to the plants and growing things in the mountains of his home. Then he learned loss: loss of his father and his mother to death, many villagers to a fever, his brother to roaming to forget his losses, and his girlfriend to inattention. But Od showed up one day and invited Brenden to come and care for the gardens in her School of Magic. He finds the door to the school under the sign of the shoe in the capitol city of Numis, Kelior.

Brenden Vetch considers himself a gardener. A better than average gardener, he'll grant you but nothing special - definitely not a magician. However, Brenden comes into the School of Magic by way of the door under the sign of the shoe. It's been years since anyone has come to the school by that door. Only Od has ever sent students to that entry. Wizard Yar is called by magic and meets Brenden as he enters the school. Yar sends him to the garden and decides to keep him a secret, at least for a while, for Brenden insists he isn't a wizard.

Od founded the School of Magic centuries ago. With the founding of the school a war was ended. Sponsored by the King, the school which was attached to the castle as a way to see that all who had talent were trained appropriately. Untrained magical users in the kingdom are killed or banished, because of the danger of an untrained magic user loose among the people.

But, in Od Magic, we quickly learn that what we see is not necessarily what is true and that truth is often not only not seen, but denied. Students of the school and wizards are banned from entering the Twilight Quarter of the city. In the Twilight Quarter, day is night and night is day and anything can and does seem to happen when Tyramin the trickster entertains. The King demands to know if Tyramin is a wizard or simply a sleight of hand artist. But, Tyramin is harder to pin down than water in a stream. Arneth, the Warden for that area of the city, isn't even sure Tyramin exists.

The characters and plot elements separate and twine about each other confusing the reader, not that the plot is vague or confusing, but that the confusion of the reader is intentional in order to keep us from seeing more than the characters. We learn as we read and we are in some way a part of the story not just the reader of the book. The language and phrasing are so rich, you find yourself drawn in and spellbound until the last page is read.

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The Wizardy of Od

Od is a gray-haired giantess who wanders the land of Numis, healing animals with her magic. When her wizardry saves the life and throne of the king, she asks only that she be allowed to set up a school of magic in an old cobbler's shop, in the Royal City of Kelior.

The school expands and thrives, and Od wanders off into the world. She is sighted so infrequently that succeeding generations of students believe she is a legend. The kings of Numis keep the magic in their kingdom under strict control and the school becomes very conservative in its teachings.

Of course, 'conservative' is not a state of affairs that will last very long in a McKillip fantasy. The School of Magic's new gardener, a teacher-wizard, a new student, a street magician, and the king's daughter combine in Od ways to shake the stodgy foundations of the school and the kingdom of Numis.

As always, McKillip's characters seem a bit dazed by life, dazed even by their own good deeds. The bad guy is only a villain-manqué and never really gets a chance to commit evil before he is swept up in the movement to bring wild magic back to the Kingdom.

Unfortunately this author's books need an honest-to-satan slime-ball villain to bring them into focus. Otherwise the reader is inclined to wander through the plot, hypnotized by McKillip's strange and beautiful settings, until the novel glides to an end and he or she says, 'Huh, did I miss something?"

Beautiful surfaces, matched by a very beautiful jacket illustration by Kinuko Y. Craft, but not much depth to "Od Magic." I'm hoping for a sequel that brings all of the characters together against a much more formidable villain. Even the wild magic comes tamely to the denouement, about as threatening as someone's collection of pet rocks.

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

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