The Wizards of Od
A school for young magicians accepts a candidate who could become the strongest wizard of all.
Post-Potter, even acknowledging all the successful pre-Rowling antecedents, could any scenario sound more hackneyed or unpromising? It's a testament to the immense talents of Patricia A. McKillip that her newest book, Od Magic (Ace, $22.95), performs the lively miracle of fleshing out such a premise in a fresh and impactful manner.
In the land of Numis, in the city of Kelior, exists a college of magics founded by the demigoddess known as Od. Od manifests one day to young Brenden Vetch, a simple country herbalist shattered by the loss of his parents to a plague. Od directs Brenden to apply at her school to become its gardener and hone his nascent magical talents.
There he will encounter a sympathetic teacher named Yar, who was once a potentially revolutionary student like Brenden but who found his sharp edge dulled by conformity over the years. The newcomer will also meet Princess Sulys, the discontented daughter of imperious King Galin; the king's bloodhound of an adviser, the wizard Valoren; and Mistral, the beautiful daughter of a traveling hedge magician, among many others. As Brenden strives to probe the depths of his fledgling powers, the paths of the others will begin to orbit around him.
McKillip shines in her presentation of the characters, the city of Kelior, and in her depiction of what magic really means. The varied districts of Kelior, including the mysterious Twilight Quarter, are nearly tangible, rich in sensory heft. And in her evocation of magic as a ceaseless pursuit of knowledge and art, not power, McKillip draws subtle parallels with her own mission as a writer.
She accomplishes this with beautifully honed sentences that alternately convey gravitas and sprightliness. The initial description of Od herself, which veers from images of majesty -- "quite tall, almost a giant, barefoot and big-boned as an ox" -- to images of Disney silliness -- "A ferret stuck his head out of her cloak pocket" -- is an example of her range. And McKillip propels her plot with Shakespearean twists, forging a marvelous comedy of errors.
Beyond all this surface attractiveness, there's a final allegorical layer to astound us: A kingdom living in fear and suspicion of what its own "technologies" might do in the hands of malicious outsiders, seeing "terrorists" even in those who would aid them but are of a different mindset. (Does Numis begin to sound like a certain 20th-century hegemonic superpower?)
Laugh Till It Hurts
Those in the mood for fabulist black humor of the kind associated with Scott Bradfield or Robert Coover or Max Barry (not so well-known as his cohorts, but responsible for the snappy Jennifer Government [2003]) need look no further than Bradley Denton's Laughin' Boy (Subterranean, $40).
In a might-have-been year 2000, a terrorist incident results in the slaughter of nearly 100 people in Wichita, Kan. One survivor of the carnage is an innocuous schlub named Daniel Clayton. But Clayton does not emerge totally unscathed. The incident triggers in him a curious psychosis. His very visible reaction to all the death around him is to break out into a kind of Tourette's-syndrome laughter. Unfortunately, Clayton's blood-splattered laughing fit is caught on amateur videotape and disseminated worldwide. He immediately becomes a pariah known as "Laughin' Boy," the poster child for a perceived insensitivity to the suffering of others, when in reality he is a compassionate father and citizen.
Clayton becomes swept up in a firestorm of governmental and mass-media forces. The FBI sequesters him with two other "freaks": Porno Girl, a middle-aged virgin with an inexplicable fixation on hardcore sexual imagery, and the Racist Ranger, a noble Caucasian ex-FBI man who cannot speak in other than Stepin Fetchit patois. Together, these three misfits will attempt to uncover the perps behind the Wichita massacre while staying one step ahead of the angry mobocracy.
Denton has a splendidly savage time dissecting the American national psyche, much in the manner of Lucius Shepard in his recent A Handbook of American Prayer . He skewers bloggers, TV journalists, politicians, psychologists and entertainers, among many other factions. His satisfyingly grim plot drags Clayton ever downward, until a final redemption.
But the pre-Sept. 11 setting and the substitution of stand-ins for certain real celebrities (comedian Larry Lanford is plainly meant to represent David Letterman, for instance) undercut some of the vitriol. I suspect that this book was written in response not to September 11th but to the Oklahoma City bombing, and went homeless till now, as larger publishers shied away from its fierce contrarianism. Its inclusion of certain fading touchstones (Linda Tripp!?!) dissipates Denton's head of righteous steam. Still, this funny, scathing assault on the current booboisie has few peers. ·
Paul Di Filippo is currently working on a series of comics involving the character Doc Samson.
