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cmbohn's review against another edition
4.0
Matt found a mysterious rune while working on his dissertation. After weeks of study, he's sure he's got it figured out. But when he reads it aloud, he finds himself transported to another land where is has magical powers, the country is in turmoil, and an evil sorcerer is out to get him.
Lots of fun. I'd never heard of this series, so I'm pleased to have discovered it.
CMB
Lots of fun. I'd never heard of this series, so I'm pleased to have discovered it.
CMB
bahbadook's review against another edition
4.0
This is a book that combines Shakespeare and physics, adds them to magic, makes Good and Evil proper nouns, and then tosses the whole lot into a classic return-the-heir-to-the-proper-place plot. And it's one of my favorites. The style is very much 1980s fantasy but it is wonderful and funny and the dragon is my favorite. That or the Demon.
This is comfort food of the fantasy variety. Yeah, there's moral and religious philosophizing but it's actually plot relevant when you have a modern man dumped into historical fantasy land where Good and Evil are actual things that affect and influence EVERYTHING. But what this is is more or less just a rousing fantasy book for people who don't want to be cynical over an ending or story, just for a little bit. You know?
I just...I really love this book. I'm so glad I got it from the best used book store that is no longer around and makes me sad.
This is comfort food of the fantasy variety. Yeah, there's moral and religious philosophizing but it's actually plot relevant when you have a modern man dumped into historical fantasy land where Good and Evil are actual things that affect and influence EVERYTHING. But what this is is more or less just a rousing fantasy book for people who don't want to be cynical over an ending or story, just for a little bit. You know?
I just...I really love this book. I'm so glad I got it from the best used book store that is no longer around and makes me sad.
acaleyn's review against another edition
3.0
Love the genre: modern day person gets (semi-)accidentally transported to a medieval alternate universe that has magic. Loved the premise: protagonist discovers that he can work magic by reciting poetry/song lyrics. Meh-ed by the execution.
I've always secretly thought about such a music-based magic system (especially after Mercedes Lackey's Bedlam's Bard series), so I had high hopes for this book. However, I wasn't fond of the main character (although much of that could stem from something as simple as, "hey, I wouldn't do that in that situation!"), and at some point it got oddly preachy about the nature of Good and Evil. If I wanted moral philosophy, I'd read a book on Ethics. Leave heavy-handed morality and religious subtext out of my fantasy books, please!
I've always secretly thought about such a music-based magic system (especially after Mercedes Lackey's Bedlam's Bard series), so I had high hopes for this book. However, I wasn't fond of the main character (although much of that could stem from something as simple as, "hey, I wouldn't do that in that situation!"), and at some point it got oddly preachy about the nature of Good and Evil. If I wanted moral philosophy, I'd read a book on Ethics. Leave heavy-handed morality and religious subtext out of my fantasy books, please!
cathman's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting combination of fantasy and Christian fiction. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series!
pendragyn's review against another edition
2.0
Nostalgia made me borrow this from the library and I soon remembered why I don't own the book anymore. It was very formative to me, back in the late 80s when I first read it, as were the Warlock In Spite Of Himself books. But the things I was willing to look past back then I'm just not able to look past anymore. There are parts of this book that I love and there are parts that I do not love. Some parts I even hate, which time had very much glossed over.
Nitpicks and slight spoilers below.
This is set almost entirely in a very white medieval-ish France but in an entirely wibbly-wobbly universe where the timeline is all mashed up, magic and monsters are real, and so is the Catholic god/devil heaven/hell good/evil divide. Readers are very heavy-handedly reminded of this at points, and yet the women (what few of them there are) are described as sexual objects, with focus on desirability (or lack thereof) even in the midst of life or death situations. And of course the minute the avowed skeptic and somewhat-lecherous post-grad student protagonist from 1980s (who has a stilted dialog quirk of a 1960s midwesterner) gets into a bad spot he immediately turns to the christian god to help because no atheists in foxholes I suppose. ::eyeroll::
I wish this was as good as I remembered it. It's not nearly as bad as some books from the time, but that's exactly a shining recommendation, is it.
Nitpicks and slight spoilers below.
This is set almost entirely in a very white medieval-ish France but in an entirely wibbly-wobbly universe where the timeline is all mashed up, magic and monsters are real, and so is the Catholic god/devil heaven/hell good/evil divide. Readers are very heavy-handedly reminded of this at points, and yet the women (what few of them there are) are described as sexual objects, with focus on desirability (or lack thereof) even in the midst of life or death situations. And of course the minute the avowed skeptic and somewhat-lecherous post-grad student protagonist from 1980s (who has a stilted dialog quirk of a 1960s midwesterner) gets into a bad spot he immediately turns to the christian god to help because no atheists in foxholes I suppose. ::eyeroll::
I wish this was as good as I remembered it. It's not nearly as bad as some books from the time, but that's exactly a shining recommendation, is it.
pussreboots's review against another edition
3.0
I read it on breaks from when I worked at Campbell Hall, UCSB.
grimread's review
3.0
This story is very(!) similar to book by L. Sprague de Camp the Incomplete Enchanter that I had to check the date when they were published to see who most obviously in some way influenced whom. It is like period after Twilight boom, when bookstores offered nothing but YA vampire or otherwise supernatural influenced literature. In this case it's just some academic reading a magical script and winding in an alternative universe where magic as such is possible making him ultra badass and eventually saving the day.
It is not really a gem in fantasy literature just more of the many.
It is not really a gem in fantasy literature just more of the many.
smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in October 1998.
There has been a subgenre of light fantasy as long as there has been fantasy. The novels in this subgenre have an air of gentle humour and some elements of parody, though the comedy is not usually so broad as in the currently more fashionable novels of Terry Pratchett, Tom Holt and Craig Shaw Gardner. In my opinion, the master of such fantasy, generally written by Americans, was L. Sprague de Camp; more recent books of this type include Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom series, the dragon books of Gordon R. Dickson and Piers Anthony's Xanth series.
Her Majesty's Wizard is particularly reminiscent of Dickson's The Dragon and His George with a dash of Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger. It tells the story of Matt, a second-rate graduate student at an American university, who abandons his research to try and decipher a fragment of parchment which has accidentally come into his possession. As he finally cracks its peculiar linguistic structure, he finds himself magically transported into a world where the recital of verse acts as a magic spell.
This is a pretty typical opening for this kind of novel. Generally, the novel does not stray far from the paradigm, but where Stasheff differs from every other fantasy writer I have ever read is in the way he takes the Catholicism of a medieval setting seriously. In some ways he is not quite successful in this - the ease with which the prayer of a churchman affects events causes some problems in the plot - but it makes the mindset of his characters a lot closer to those in the ultimate source material of a fantasy novel, the medieval romances about Arthur, Charlemagne and so on. He is able to avoid the embarrassment about religious issues which makes so much fantasy rather coy on the subject; it is really unusual to see religion given something of the place it had in the medieval mindset. I particularly liked the way that the Catholic sacrament of confession was given such a strong and influential role, as it maybe should be in works based around a society in which every important person would have their own confessor.
There has been a subgenre of light fantasy as long as there has been fantasy. The novels in this subgenre have an air of gentle humour and some elements of parody, though the comedy is not usually so broad as in the currently more fashionable novels of Terry Pratchett, Tom Holt and Craig Shaw Gardner. In my opinion, the master of such fantasy, generally written by Americans, was L. Sprague de Camp; more recent books of this type include Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom series, the dragon books of Gordon R. Dickson and Piers Anthony's Xanth series.
Her Majesty's Wizard is particularly reminiscent of Dickson's The Dragon and His George with a dash of Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger. It tells the story of Matt, a second-rate graduate student at an American university, who abandons his research to try and decipher a fragment of parchment which has accidentally come into his possession. As he finally cracks its peculiar linguistic structure, he finds himself magically transported into a world where the recital of verse acts as a magic spell.
This is a pretty typical opening for this kind of novel. Generally, the novel does not stray far from the paradigm, but where Stasheff differs from every other fantasy writer I have ever read is in the way he takes the Catholicism of a medieval setting seriously. In some ways he is not quite successful in this - the ease with which the prayer of a churchman affects events causes some problems in the plot - but it makes the mindset of his characters a lot closer to those in the ultimate source material of a fantasy novel, the medieval romances about Arthur, Charlemagne and so on. He is able to avoid the embarrassment about religious issues which makes so much fantasy rather coy on the subject; it is really unusual to see religion given something of the place it had in the medieval mindset. I particularly liked the way that the Catholic sacrament of confession was given such a strong and influential role, as it maybe should be in works based around a society in which every important person would have their own confessor.
cgcunard's review
2.0
Definitely not the book that I expected it to be. While Christianity or something quite like it is often at the center of a lot of medieval fantasies, it rarely calls itself by name. Now, I’m getting over some of my past issues with faith (although religion is still easy to take issue with, at times), but it bugged me a little how unquestioningly Christian (and particularly Catholic) this work was. I think Stasheff could’ve gotten a lot more mileage out of Matt’s crisis of faith. It seemed to me that it was too easy for Matt to figure out that religion was “real” in this world, and it also felt like he believed it for all of the oportunistic reasons. It makes me think, frankly, a little of Pascal’s triangle. That’s a reasoned method of approaching faith — but I’d like to think that any Supreme Being is concerned with motive.
Likewise, it’s easy to believe in religion in a world where there is visible proof of its efficacy, if not its “truthfulness,” per se. It’s not that that kind of faith is cheaper…just that it’s different from what I can know. Unlike [a:Diane Duane|11761|Diane Duane|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1285664395p2/11761.jpg], who can convince me that wizards still fear death even after having visited Timeheart, Stasheff doesn’t really do a good job of making me feel Matt’s doubts and faith in equal measure.
At times the cast was a bit large, and the plot didn’t quite move the way I would have wanted it to. I feel like Matt didn’t accomplish the things that he set out to do — especially learning the rules of magic. He did get smarter about creating his spell-poems as the story progressed, but I kinda wanted him to be geekier about it! Stasheff had the chance to effectively write a cross between a scientist and an artist, but it didn’t quite happen that way.
Alisande bothered me because she didn’t have much of a character. It’s all too easy these days to be the virtuous, strong, young princess-in-hiding. The whole “since God is real and manifests physically in this universe, divine right is real and monarchs are infallible” thing also seemed like a very literal deus ex machina.
You know, maybe that’s the way this whole book seemed: like it could’ve been a challenge, but then God interfered and made it not about the characters. Yes, in a Christian context we’re not supposed to take credit for what we achieve — but that’s not what we want in a story. Again, Diane Duane comes to mind; I think her Young Wizards books really achieve the right balance of personal responsibility and humility. Her wizards are powerful but know that they are not the sources of their own power; they acknowledge their roles as tools in the hands of greater Powers, but tools whose thoughts, actions, decisions, and agency actually matter. Yes, she relies upon deus ex machina herself, but when she does it, it never feels like a cheat.
On another note — this is probably a personal thing, related primarily to my love of Remus Lupin, but I don’t like the idea that lycanthropy is necessarily a curse for something you have done wrong. I much prefer traditional, get-bitten-and-you’re-stuck lunar-cycle lycanthropy. Yeah, it’s traditional, but it has to have worked so well for a reason! And the whole Syeesa and Father Brunel existing primarily as sacrifices thing didn’t work too well for me, either. I wanted to see more of their characters.
Although the author’s note at the end did make me think about this book in a nicer light — after all, what are Diane Duane’s wizards and [a:Jim Butcher|10746|Jim Butcher|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205261964p2/10746.jpg]’s Knights of the Cross if not (somewhat) manifestations of Christianity (or, more generally, religious/moral/ethical values) in a wizardly setting, where faith is itself a form of magic? — I think the primary sticking point for me with this book was the level of Catholic guilt. Sins of the flesh, yes, okay. Probably modern culture has inured me against them. Because for a lot of the time, it felt like the characters were getting worked up over stuff that didn’t need to matter to them as much as it did.
Likewise, it’s easy to believe in religion in a world where there is visible proof of its efficacy, if not its “truthfulness,” per se. It’s not that that kind of faith is cheaper…just that it’s different from what I can know. Unlike [a:Diane Duane|11761|Diane Duane|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1285664395p2/11761.jpg], who can convince me that wizards still fear death even after having visited Timeheart, Stasheff doesn’t really do a good job of making me feel Matt’s doubts and faith in equal measure.
At times the cast was a bit large, and the plot didn’t quite move the way I would have wanted it to. I feel like Matt didn’t accomplish the things that he set out to do — especially learning the rules of magic. He did get smarter about creating his spell-poems as the story progressed, but I kinda wanted him to be geekier about it! Stasheff had the chance to effectively write a cross between a scientist and an artist, but it didn’t quite happen that way.
Alisande bothered me because she didn’t have much of a character. It’s all too easy these days to be the virtuous, strong, young princess-in-hiding. The whole “since God is real and manifests physically in this universe, divine right is real and monarchs are infallible” thing also seemed like a very literal deus ex machina.
You know, maybe that’s the way this whole book seemed: like it could’ve been a challenge, but then God interfered and made it not about the characters. Yes, in a Christian context we’re not supposed to take credit for what we achieve — but that’s not what we want in a story. Again, Diane Duane comes to mind; I think her Young Wizards books really achieve the right balance of personal responsibility and humility. Her wizards are powerful but know that they are not the sources of their own power; they acknowledge their roles as tools in the hands of greater Powers, but tools whose thoughts, actions, decisions, and agency actually matter. Yes, she relies upon deus ex machina herself, but when she does it, it never feels like a cheat.
On another note — this is probably a personal thing, related primarily to my love of Remus Lupin, but I don’t like the idea that lycanthropy is necessarily a curse for something you have done wrong. I much prefer traditional, get-bitten-and-you’re-stuck lunar-cycle lycanthropy. Yeah, it’s traditional, but it has to have worked so well for a reason! And the whole Syeesa and Father Brunel existing primarily as sacrifices thing didn’t work too well for me, either. I wanted to see more of their characters.
Although the author’s note at the end did make me think about this book in a nicer light — after all, what are Diane Duane’s wizards and [a:Jim Butcher|10746|Jim Butcher|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1205261964p2/10746.jpg]’s Knights of the Cross if not (somewhat) manifestations of Christianity (or, more generally, religious/moral/ethical values) in a wizardly setting, where faith is itself a form of magic? — I think the primary sticking point for me with this book was the level of Catholic guilt. Sins of the flesh, yes, okay. Probably modern culture has inured me against them. Because for a lot of the time, it felt like the characters were getting worked up over stuff that didn’t need to matter to them as much as it did.
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