Od Magic, Patricia McKillip
Jun. 28th, 2005 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienAttempting actual content for a change, not very jointedly:
This is not at all a bad book, but I tend to concur with the general opinion that it isn't McKillip's best. In a kingdom where magic has been nationalized and strictly controlled, the characters struggle with powers that don't fit into the system. The writing has the usual dreamlike, shimmery texture, and a fair allowance of humour and wonder and humanity and magic -- and a cactus! The labyrinth in the basement recalls The Sorceress and the Cygnet. Masks and disguises are a major theme, especially in the thread dealing with Mistral, the magician's daughter, and the whole Twilight Quarter seems to exist in a state of permanent Mardi Gras.
The novel seems to suffer somewhat from having too many characters, with too many only tenuously-connected agendas; the plot is complicated, and relies too much on some characters assuming non-existent connections between others who met mostly by accident. The end of the book isn't so much a happy ending as a place from which things can move on in hopeful directions, but some threads don't seem to reach even that much closure, so the overall reading experience is less satisfying than in some of McKillip's other novels.
This is not at all a bad book, but I tend to concur with the general opinion that it isn't McKillip's best. In a kingdom where magic has been nationalized and strictly controlled, the characters struggle with powers that don't fit into the system. The writing has the usual dreamlike, shimmery texture, and a fair allowance of humour and wonder and humanity and magic -- and a cactus! The labyrinth in the basement recalls The Sorceress and the Cygnet. Masks and disguises are a major theme, especially in the thread dealing with Mistral, the magician's daughter, and the whole Twilight Quarter seems to exist in a state of permanent Mardi Gras.
The novel seems to suffer somewhat from having too many characters, with too many only tenuously-connected agendas; the plot is complicated, and relies too much on some characters assuming non-existent connections between others who met mostly by accident. The end of the book isn't so much a happy ending as a place from which things can move on in hopeful directions, but some threads don't seem to reach even that much closure, so the overall reading experience is less satisfying than in some of McKillip's other novels.