Thursday, December 19, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner




Unnatural Magic is the debut novel from author C.M. Waggoner.  It's a fantasy novel featuring some familiar elements - a mage school that discriminates based upon class, tension between humans and non-humans and the halfbloods caught in between, but spins these more common tropes in some different ways.  It's also got some aspects of mystery and romance in there as well - with the resultant tone overall being solid and light despite the dark undertones of some of the issues and topics at the heart of this novel (such as, you know, murders).

Some of these aspects work better than others, but overall Unnatural Magic is a pretty solid and enjoyable novel.  Unfortunately, the book tries to carry on two separate plotlines at once and one (the romance one) is far better than the other, with the plotlines joining only in the very last act - to finish off a mystery that is very very obvious.  It's a book that probably could've used 50 more pages devoted to the second plotline to make it not feel abandoned and lesser at times, but the end result is still solid and enjoyable, and worth your time.


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Since she was a young girl, Onna found herself with an eager capacity for learning, and began to dream about going to Wizard School and becoming a Wizard.  But despite Onna's clear brilliance, she finds herself rejected by the most local wizard school, and so she embarks on a long journey to Hexos where only the brightest of potential wizard students are taken.  Yet along the way there, as Onna leaves her village for the first real time, she encounters some evils she never thought existed: discrimination and bloody killing of trolls.

Tsira is a half-human half-troll who lives on her own in a cave in a self-imposed exile from her clan and her domineering Ma.  But when a young man named Jeckran, a former human soldier hunting down rogue trolls, finds himself nearly dead on her doorstep, Tsira takes it upon herself to nurse him back to health.  And in the process, Tsira and Jeckran begin to have feelings for one another, and travel around the world searching for a life to make for the two of them.  Yet these days such a search is dangerous, especially as not only are trolls welcome everywhere, but someone seems to be murdering them through magical means.

As Onna learns magic from the most improbable source and Tsira and Jeckran learn to know each other, the fragile peace between humans and trolls lies on an edge, and only the their combined work can find and possibly stop the person responsible.....
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Unnatural Magic is split essentially into two plotlines: First, there's Onna's plot where she first endeavors to find proper wizard training and then to learn how to use this magic to help people, particularly the trolls being attacked and murdered in Hexos.  Second, there's Tsira and Jeckran's plotline of the two learning who each other is, realizing their feelings for one another and how that is affected by their different species traits, with this plotline seen through both Tsira and Jeckran's eyes.  Maybe because the book has twice as many POV characters in this plotline, but Tsira and Jeckran's plot seems to get substantially more page-time as the story progresses.

The good news is that the Tsira and Jeckran plotline is by far the best part of this book, and it's really good!  In a sense, it's a romance plot (complete with happy ending), as the two realize that they have feelings for each other as they try and find work after being driven out of Tsira's cave, then return to Tsira's family and have to at least pretend to be a couple in Troll society*, etc.  The feelings between the two are done really well, and it's easy to fall in love with both of them: Tsira, who is insistent that she's a Reig (see below) and not willing to bow down to her Ma's own demands, and showcases how right she is with how Reig she acts in her partnership with Jeckran, and Jeckran, the deserter soldier who finds himself caring more and more about Tsira and tries to calm her potentially wrong instincts, while getting a little jealous of others Tsira gives attention to.  It works really well and I kind of loved them both.

Troll Society by the way is very interestingly done here, with it not being racist towards half bloods, and with gender not really being a thing for trolls, who choose whether to be Reig (coded in human language as "she") or "Vahn" (as "he") on their own regardless of biological parts.  Moreover, those terms don't map to human genders, with "Reig"s being dominant members of households and "Vahn"s essentially being the submissive members - literally (and physically) in the terms of making a permanent partnership with a Reig, and figuratively in terms of role within a clan.  It's really interesting and makes Tsira and Jeckran's plot, as well as the small aspects of troll life that Onna seese, far more interesting.

The Onna plotline on the other hand is kind of a lesser one.  There's some interesting aspects here - Onna is the clear prodigy who only doesn't get training at first due to her class and sex, and her brilliance, to go along with some naivete she quickly loses, makes her easy to root for.  Unfortunately much of her training eventually comes off page, and her plotline shifts from seemingly learning to become a greater and master wizard to her detective work in trying to figure out who is killing trolls - essentially a mystery plot, with even a major event in Onna's ascendance to the near top of the wizarding world happening seemingly out of nowhere and out of Onna's perspective oddly enough.  And the mystery isn't very good, with the eventual culprit being the obvious suspect that every reader will guess from pretty early on (there's only 3 potential suspects and two are obvious red herrings).

Overall though, the Tsira-Jeckran romance is really good and carries this book even when Onna's plotline fails to be nearly as interesting, making this book still well worth reading.  If there are other stories Waggoner wants to tell in this world, I'll be here for it,
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