Lucas Blogs About Unnatural Magic

It's magic!

So, what's this book's deal?

Unnatural Magic is C.M. Waggoner's debut novel. It's a fantasy story with mystery elements and strong bent towards social commentary.

That sounds like a thing you'd be interested in.

It is!

What's it about?

Well I'm not sure if I should start with describing the world or with a quick summary of how the plot kicks off.

Let's start with the plot then you can delve into the setting more.

Okay. You're being unusually helpful, Hypothetical Reader.

Times are hard, we all have to help each other out.

Fair enough. So, we start with Onna Gebowa. She's a merchant's daughter who shows a seemingly preternaturally facility for math which leads her parents to send her to the local school house. Turns out that Mr. Heisst's school teaches the children of well-to-do-ish families how to do magic. However, her career path is scuttled when her audition to attend the prestigious Weltsir College in the capital is deemed to involve—

Unnatural magic?

Spot on, HR! That's right, so she then sets out for Hexos, whose magic school has a reputation for placing talent above social rank and gender in their admissions. Meanwhile, we meet Cynallumwyntsira (or just Tsira) a half-troll who's been living alone in a cave after being estranged from her clan, which is led by her mother. One night, she comes across Phillim Kail Jeckran, a soldier who's been injured after deserting his ranks.  Despite his initial reticence the two develop a friendship (perhaps more?) as they set out on the road after being randomly attacked by a wizard. Over the course of the novel, Waggoner shifts between the story of Onna's magical education which ultimately leads her to become the apprentice of Loga, the Lord-Mage of Hexos, just as he finds himself investigating a string of murders in Hexos' troll neighborhoods, and the relationship between Jeckran and Tsira while the two try to grapple with their growing attraction to each other and the ways in which their own hang-ups affect that. The two stories eventually come together when an attack against Tsira's clan leads her and Jeckran to Hexos, and I think it should be obvious how that brings the two story threads together.

I think I can piece it together. So then, did you enjoy reading Unnatural Magic?

I did!

Would you care to elaborate on why?

Sure! One of Waggoner's clear strengths as a writer is her world-building. She supplies just enough detail to give the setting verisimilitude without bogging down the reader with too much exposition. Something that I specifically like about the setting is the diversity that's present within its world. A lesser novel might essentially boil down the politics of the world to humans and trolls, but Waggoner fills hers with multiple named countries and cultures (for example, Onna is a Daeslander, but her grandparents were immigrants who came to Daesland after converting to the Elgarite religion, and her dark skin marks her has something of an outsider, similarly, her childhood friend Sy Czarda is a Hasendi, a member of a religous minority that practices vegetarianism, among other things, then once she travels to Hexos, she's confounded by a Sangan restaurant that offers so many dishes they have to provide their guests with a written menu).

You said she didn't bog readers down with too much detail.

You don't get all of that at once. It's sprinkled in gradually. I also like that she's eschewed the usual fantasy trope of a setting with a roughly medieval level of technology by creating a setting that's seems a good deal more like the mid-to-late nineteenth century. There are political radicals, a metropolitan police force, steps towards a modern understanding of medicine, three-volume novels, &c. It's a cool setting and it fits in with the story's themes of stepping out of defined social roles.

Cool.

She's also good with characterization. This is partly due to the novel's third-person limited omniscient point-of-view that switches between Onna, Tsira, and Jeckran. This allows Waggoner to simultaneously cover both storylines while also letting readers get to know the characters, and, of course, the characters they interact with. This is also a place where Waggoner's use of well-deployed detail shines. One example is an early interaction between Onna and Sy: You see, Sy's about to take the entrance exam at Weltsir and so Onna gives him a mirror that's been ensorcelled to let the two of them talk while he's away at school, but the first time he uses it is to ask her to help him with the exam.

Huh, and that illustrates the disconnect in the way they view their friendship.

Yeah! Neat that.

Now you've said that the novel is partly-focused on social commentary. How is that handled?

Pretty well. The fact that the world is so well-drawn means that Waggoner is able to seamlessly integrate the ways in which gender, religion, class, and ethnicity can interact to affect the way people treat each other. For example, in trolls have a view of gender doesn't always correlate with sex. Generally, female trolls are larger and occupy the gender of reig, which uses she/her pronouns and tends to occupy leadership positions, but not all reigs are female. Although Tsira is smaller than an average troll because she's half-human, she identifies as a reig, this is a source of friction with her mother who thinks that she could live a more comfortable life if she declared herself a vahn (a role usually occupied by male trolls) and lived in another reig's clan.

Oh, so it's a sort of roundabout way of discussing the ways in which culture can impact gender roles and puts pressure on people who don't feel like they conform to those roles?

That's how I read it.

Okay. Well, what would you say are the novel's weaknesses?

The plotting and pacing are both a little lob-sided. While Waggoner's work at world and character building in the first half of the novel are very well done, this means it takes  quite a bit of time for the actual plot of the novel to get going. At least the part about the murder investigation. In fact, it took long enough for that to get going that the resolution feels a bit rushed. In fact, in the final chapters I was convinced that the novel would turn out to be the first book in a series because I doubted that the mystery could be unraveled in the remaining pages (I was wrong, it's definitely a standalone). That said, the story of Jeckran and Tsira's relationship develops at a much more natural pace and helps carry the reader through the course of the novel.

All right, so I guess all that's left is your final verdict.

Yeah. It's a good book. Again, there are pacing issues, but overall, I like the way that Waggoner builds up the world of the book and populates it with interesting details and characters. If you enjoy fantasy that's a little off the beaten path and doesn't involve a lot of sword-play and quests, you might want to check this out.

Unnatural Magic by C. M. Waggoner, Ace Books trade paperback edition, November 2019, 388 pages, pairs well with opulent feasts where you're not sure if the person across from you is a grisly murderer

Links:

Here's the author's twitter, if you're into that kinda thing.

So, it turns out that Waggoner already has another novel that's forthcoming in January of next year, it's called The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry. I'm in.