marycatelli (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marycatelli) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
books2019-11-20 06:25 pm
marycatelli) wrote in books2019-11-20 06:25 pm
Entry tags:
Angel Mage
Angel Mage by Garth Nix
A disaster strikes a nation. A century later, a woman wakes from a sleep and finds that things are prepared for her plan. Four people in fact.
Then we follow those four people in a Three-Musketeers-like setting, with religion entirely excised and replaced with the practice of theurgy -- working magic with angels (no mention of God) -- and a lot of Christian labels on other things.
A lot of fun adventures, though the end is entirely too tidy and neat -- and in too short a compass. The setting doesn't work because the price for theurgy is, while high enough to explain why some uses are not put into play, too high to explain why others are (with a very slight price but for a very slight effect), and the world is changed in some ways that the magic would explain, not in others that the magic would make a lot of sense, and in some ways that the magic, as implemented, would not explain.
A disaster strikes a nation. A century later, a woman wakes from a sleep and finds that things are prepared for her plan. Four people in fact.
Then we follow those four people in a Three-Musketeers-like setting, with religion entirely excised and replaced with the practice of theurgy -- working magic with angels (no mention of God) -- and a lot of Christian labels on other things.
A lot of fun adventures, though the end is entirely too tidy and neat -- and in too short a compass. The setting doesn't work because the price for theurgy is, while high enough to explain why some uses are not put into play, too high to explain why others are (with a very slight price but for a very slight effect), and the world is changed in some ways that the magic would explain, not in others that the magic would make a lot of sense, and in some ways that the magic, as implemented, would not explain.