Reviews

I'm choosing a trilogy to record as my 60th book, deal.

Trudi Canavan's Black Magician trilogy, on first glance, is pleasant, uncomplex, and nostalgic. It's a nice counter to the kind of fantasy that I've been seeing published lately; this isn't dark, it's not grim and gritty, it's just a story of a young girl going to wizard school and becoming super badass. It's not a challenge. I'll never call it a challenge. What it is though, is deceptive.

The Black Magician trilogy follows the story of Sonea, a young girl from the slums, who discovers she has magical ability while throwing rocks at wizards during protests. As magical talent - and education in general - is reserved only for the wealthy, and the wealthy are directly responsible for so many of the horrors of the poor, she is terrified. When she learns that the wizards she attacked are seeking her out, she runs to find refuge among the Thieves, an underground community of criminals and general ne'er-do-wells.

Sounds inoffensive and easy right?

It is. I'm not going to do a fakeout here and say "oh but it's so much more, look at this subtext" - this is a book of inherently easy language, clearly defined characters, walking down well trodden paths. On a narrative level, it's hardly breaking new ground; this is a simple story about a girl going to wizard school. You could (and should) hand it to a thirteen year old and they'd be able to read it with ease...

...but it's so much more.

See, I constantly tell my writer friends the same thing. The world sucks, but writers are in a very unique position - because people turn to fiction to escape their shitty life situation, writers have the opportunity to show solidarity to the downtrodden. Writers can offer other possibilities, suggest different ways the world could be through either statement or description. Writers can prescribe change.

This, funnily enough, is what I was looking for when I said "fuck it, I'm just reading female writers, or at least, female protagonists, for a while." I wasn't looking for someone jawdropping like Ursula LeGuin. I wasn't looking for someone to get heavy and depressing like Margaret Atwood. I wasn't looking for the gutwrenching honesty and pain of Octavia Butler. I wanted this series.

Canavan wrote a traditional fantasy novel trilogy from a female perspective. In doing so, she showed the difference between a woman and a man's experience, both in the world she created, and in the industry she wrote in. There's hunky older dudes in this book, there's a dismissal of "simple" warrior magics, there's all these blatant reversals of traditional gender roles in play... but there's also stark realities of a patriarchal world. Women in this feel vulnerable, not through their own weakness (which trust me, is not in play in this series), but through societal expectations. Women are sold into slavery, face issues like rape and abuse, and generally have a much harder time than men in similar situations.

But it's not about that. It's fantastic, in that this series is utterly up front about what it is - a simple battle of good versus evil - but has all of these fantastic themes of being an outsider running through everything, because Canavan, as a female fantasy writer, has hardly lived in the mainstream at any point in her life. These themes won't impress anybody looking for the next great feminist novel. They're not meant to. They're insidious and that's brilliant.

I'll give you an example, and I'll leave character names out.

A gay character visits a group of people who are very, like, Westboro Baptist about sexuality. About a lot of things, actually. A conversation occurs where this character winds up saying "honestly I know this is important but I just want to leave, this is all kinds of fucked up and I don't want to witness this shit any more." Another character says "okay, yeah, let's peace out, you gotta feel comfortable." On the way back, in conversation, we learn that the main group, the viewpoint society that is so clearly European Fantasy Kingdom, is also real homophobic.

That's not a very big statement to make at all, right? It's not a surprise that "some people are homophobic" - and again, that's not the theme of the series - but it adds to this undercurrent running through the whole narrative. Everything, ultimately, is saying the same message, over and over again, in an incredibly blunt yet surprisingly subtle way, to shift the reader's perceptions and opinion to stop being so damn bigoted. The continued viewpoints of outsiders reinforce this message over and over again, but it's never (and I can't say this enough) obtuse and blunt. It's not a call to action. It's just a very simple message, in a very simple book series, that I am very surprised I loved so much. "Stop thinking of people different to you as worse than you."

Not hard to understand, right? It's simple. Pleasant. Uncomplex.

This series may not be for you, and that's fine. Give it to a thirteen year old. Flick through in a day or so. It's not a gourmet meal of caviar and stuffed zucchini flowers. It's expertly crafted, masterfully seasoned, Julia Child quality chicken fingers. There's no pressure to love it, but the only way to hate this is if you yourself are the problem.

Me, I love me some chicken fingers from time to time. They're light. Pleasant.

Nostalgic.

More...