[Books/Authors] A Blight of Mages by Karen Miller
Disclaimer: I won a copy of the HarperVoyager edition of this book from a drawing on Karen Miller's LJ, karenmiller, with an absolutely gorgeous cover. It will be released in the U.S. by Orbit on August 4th (with, in my opinion, a functional but less gorgeous cover).
The gorgeous cover.
A Blight of Mages on Amazon.
Now, with that done and over with, how many times have I encouraged my FList to read anything by Karen Miller? How many times? Many, many times, and I haven't changed my opinion at all. Go. Do it. Read her books.
Ahem.
A Blight of Mages is a prequel to The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage, which I have discussed before. Without getting too spoilery, in those books we find out that the kingdom of Lur is composed of the Olken people and Doranen people living together, not always in harmony, and that the Olken are the native people of Lur, while the Doranen are the descendants of people who came over the mountains 600 years ago, from "lost Dorana," their own kingdom, destroyed. They left behind them a thing of evil called Morg, and a Doranen mage named Barl erected a wall to protect Lur from Morg.
Six hundred years later, Barl is worshipped as a deity, and Morg is all but forgotten. The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage are about what happens when Barl's incants begin to fail.
But A Blight of Mages goes back six hundred years, it shows us Barl and the man Morg was... Morgan Danfey. A man, a mage, and Barl's lover.
Miller's talent is in painting detailed, amazingly realistic portraits of her characters, especially the more complex, morally ambiguous ones. I've said it before, Miller creates people I both care about and want to slap silly. I love Asher, and Dathne, Gar, and later, in The Prodigal Mage and The Reluctant Mage, I love Rafel and despite myself, I love Arlin.
In Miller's Lur series, there are protagonists and antagonists, people who are good, people who want to do good but misunderstand what that is, people who are arrogant and prejudiced, but there is only one true villain, only one source of real evil, and that's Morg.
In A Blight of Mages, we see that Morg, too, was once a powerful, arrogant, but ultimately decent man. He was good enough to attract Barl, and we see that Barl herself was arrogant as well, powerful and arrogant and just as easily led astray, though at least there are some boundaries she does not cross.
While reading A Blight of Mages, I cried. I cried, and I dreaded what I knew was coming, and I learned the difference between myth and reality. Barl both is and is not what later generations make of her; Morg is as dangerous and evil as told, but he wasn't always.
Spoilers start here.
I cried for Barl, being an unranked mage, and thus not considered worth notice, despite her prodigious power and talent. She is, indeed, the greatest mage Dorana has ever seen. I consider her even greater than Morgan, because he's talented, yes, without her, but it isn't until he works with her that his ideas really go anywhere... she is the real power. Barl is so incredibly talented, but because she isn't part of one of the First Families, because she's unranked, she is denied admittance to the College of Mages, denied the opportunity to learn at the best of the schools, to learn all she can learn.
Which is exactly how she ends up studying with Morgan, supposedly in his custody and bound from her magic. Venette, one of the Council of Mages and a friend of Morgan, later wonders how much of the disaster might have been averted if she and the other arrogant Council members had just paid no attention to her status and just allowed her to be educated at the College.
It's a beautiful, brilliant observation on how prejudice and discrimination can turn on and destroy the people who practice it.
Barl is intriguing, because in the books that come before (after?) this one, she's worshipped as a saint or even a god, but here... well, in her own way she's just as arrogant (that word comes up a lot, because it's true) as the rest of them, because she knows her power, she knows she's great, or could be. Her plight, even as self-concerned as she is, made me cry because, well, it's one I understand in a way. I think almost everyone can understand wanting something so bad it hurts, but being denied it for reasons that are unjust and unfair. Almost everyone can understand knowing you deserve a privilege, but being denied it by those who already have it.
Aaaand that's a line of thought I'm going to leave alone now, because it's very volatile, and right now I want to discuss books.
Anyway, Barl's character is very well done... this is the real Barl, not the sainted myth of Lur in six hundred years' time.
And Morgan... I like Morgan. But throughout Morgan's scenes, it's very, very easy to see the mindset that carries him forward to become Morg. He's a good man, a decent man, but he's also of a ranked First Family, and he's a Councillor, and at first he's just as easy as his peers to dismiss Barl as an unranked nobody. When he does come to understand the power and talent she holds, he uses it for his own ends.
What I find most interesting about Morgan is that even after his use of dangerous catalysts twists his mind, he still loves Barl. In a warped way, but it's still there. He hates her, but loves her. When she begins to perform her last incant, the one that will take her life in order to raise Barl's Wall to protect Lur from him, Morg calls her bitch, slut, treacherous whore... he calls her a traitor. Because she's already betrayed him by attempting to bind him, stop him, of course, but also because she's breaking her promise never to die. He still doesn't want her to die.
There's an argument, I suppose, that it's simply the act of breaking the promise that angers him, that it has nothing to do with her. It's possible he wants her alive only to torture her, and I have no doubts he plans to torture her.
But no, I believe that Morg is still enough of Morgan to be attached to Barl,and even to love her, though the love is twisted as much as his mind. Part of the reason I believe this is because before we get this look at the Morgan that Morg used to be, we get a look at who Morg is six hundred years later, in The Reluctant Mage. He's still obsessing about Barl, he's still caught between love and hatred. He misses her, and is angry that she chose to die rather than become immortal, and he's still angry at her for betraying him.
Back to A Blight of Mages, I also find it intriguing that what attracts Barl and Morgan to each other is their magical talent. They love each other because they're both brilliant and powerful, because they're both willing to look past the rules to the edges of their potential. They are alike, and this is at the same time good for both of them and bad for both of them. Morgan becomes less concerned with status and rank, while Barl is able to learn to her heart's content... yet, they're both arrogant enough to believe the rules, the laws intended to keep magic-use safe, don't apply to them. And together, they not only blow the rules out of the water, but everything always believed to be impossible. Things which should be impossible, they're able to do together, thus creating abomination and destruction.
Remmie! Oh Remmie, Remmie! It's never known Barl had a brother, a twin!, and now we know it's because she magically blasted him from her diaries in a fit of pique... erasing him from history, and leaving the way open for the Innocent Mage to be born and never know the truth of his heritage.
Spoilers end.
Basically, I am in love with this book... perhaps more than any of Miller's others, and that's saying something, because I love everything she writes.
Everyone read them so we can squee together.
The gorgeous cover.
A Blight of Mages on Amazon.
Now, with that done and over with, how many times have I encouraged my FList to read anything by Karen Miller? How many times? Many, many times, and I haven't changed my opinion at all. Go. Do it. Read her books.
Ahem.
A Blight of Mages is a prequel to The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage, which I have discussed before. Without getting too spoilery, in those books we find out that the kingdom of Lur is composed of the Olken people and Doranen people living together, not always in harmony, and that the Olken are the native people of Lur, while the Doranen are the descendants of people who came over the mountains 600 years ago, from "lost Dorana," their own kingdom, destroyed. They left behind them a thing of evil called Morg, and a Doranen mage named Barl erected a wall to protect Lur from Morg.
Six hundred years later, Barl is worshipped as a deity, and Morg is all but forgotten. The Innocent Mage and The Awakened Mage are about what happens when Barl's incants begin to fail.
But A Blight of Mages goes back six hundred years, it shows us Barl and the man Morg was... Morgan Danfey. A man, a mage, and Barl's lover.
Miller's talent is in painting detailed, amazingly realistic portraits of her characters, especially the more complex, morally ambiguous ones. I've said it before, Miller creates people I both care about and want to slap silly. I love Asher, and Dathne, Gar, and later, in The Prodigal Mage and The Reluctant Mage, I love Rafel and despite myself, I love Arlin.
In Miller's Lur series, there are protagonists and antagonists, people who are good, people who want to do good but misunderstand what that is, people who are arrogant and prejudiced, but there is only one true villain, only one source of real evil, and that's Morg.
In A Blight of Mages, we see that Morg, too, was once a powerful, arrogant, but ultimately decent man. He was good enough to attract Barl, and we see that Barl herself was arrogant as well, powerful and arrogant and just as easily led astray, though at least there are some boundaries she does not cross.
While reading A Blight of Mages, I cried. I cried, and I dreaded what I knew was coming, and I learned the difference between myth and reality. Barl both is and is not what later generations make of her; Morg is as dangerous and evil as told, but he wasn't always.
Spoilers start here.
I cried for Barl, being an unranked mage, and thus not considered worth notice, despite her prodigious power and talent. She is, indeed, the greatest mage Dorana has ever seen. I consider her even greater than Morgan, because he's talented, yes, without her, but it isn't until he works with her that his ideas really go anywhere... she is the real power. Barl is so incredibly talented, but because she isn't part of one of the First Families, because she's unranked, she is denied admittance to the College of Mages, denied the opportunity to learn at the best of the schools, to learn all she can learn.
Which is exactly how she ends up studying with Morgan, supposedly in his custody and bound from her magic. Venette, one of the Council of Mages and a friend of Morgan, later wonders how much of the disaster might have been averted if she and the other arrogant Council members had just paid no attention to her status and just allowed her to be educated at the College.
It's a beautiful, brilliant observation on how prejudice and discrimination can turn on and destroy the people who practice it.
Barl is intriguing, because in the books that come before (after?) this one, she's worshipped as a saint or even a god, but here... well, in her own way she's just as arrogant (that word comes up a lot, because it's true) as the rest of them, because she knows her power, she knows she's great, or could be. Her plight, even as self-concerned as she is, made me cry because, well, it's one I understand in a way. I think almost everyone can understand wanting something so bad it hurts, but being denied it for reasons that are unjust and unfair. Almost everyone can understand knowing you deserve a privilege, but being denied it by those who already have it.
Aaaand that's a line of thought I'm going to leave alone now, because it's very volatile, and right now I want to discuss books.
Anyway, Barl's character is very well done... this is the real Barl, not the sainted myth of Lur in six hundred years' time.
And Morgan... I like Morgan. But throughout Morgan's scenes, it's very, very easy to see the mindset that carries him forward to become Morg. He's a good man, a decent man, but he's also of a ranked First Family, and he's a Councillor, and at first he's just as easy as his peers to dismiss Barl as an unranked nobody. When he does come to understand the power and talent she holds, he uses it for his own ends.
What I find most interesting about Morgan is that even after his use of dangerous catalysts twists his mind, he still loves Barl. In a warped way, but it's still there. He hates her, but loves her. When she begins to perform her last incant, the one that will take her life in order to raise Barl's Wall to protect Lur from him, Morg calls her bitch, slut, treacherous whore... he calls her a traitor. Because she's already betrayed him by attempting to bind him, stop him, of course, but also because she's breaking her promise never to die. He still doesn't want her to die.
There's an argument, I suppose, that it's simply the act of breaking the promise that angers him, that it has nothing to do with her. It's possible he wants her alive only to torture her, and I have no doubts he plans to torture her.
But no, I believe that Morg is still enough of Morgan to be attached to Barl,and even to love her, though the love is twisted as much as his mind. Part of the reason I believe this is because before we get this look at the Morgan that Morg used to be, we get a look at who Morg is six hundred years later, in The Reluctant Mage. He's still obsessing about Barl, he's still caught between love and hatred. He misses her, and is angry that she chose to die rather than become immortal, and he's still angry at her for betraying him.
Back to A Blight of Mages, I also find it intriguing that what attracts Barl and Morgan to each other is their magical talent. They love each other because they're both brilliant and powerful, because they're both willing to look past the rules to the edges of their potential. They are alike, and this is at the same time good for both of them and bad for both of them. Morgan becomes less concerned with status and rank, while Barl is able to learn to her heart's content... yet, they're both arrogant enough to believe the rules, the laws intended to keep magic-use safe, don't apply to them. And together, they not only blow the rules out of the water, but everything always believed to be impossible. Things which should be impossible, they're able to do together, thus creating abomination and destruction.
Remmie! Oh Remmie, Remmie! It's never known Barl had a brother, a twin!, and now we know it's because she magically blasted him from her diaries in a fit of pique... erasing him from history, and leaving the way open for the Innocent Mage to be born and never know the truth of his heritage.
Spoilers end.
Basically, I am in love with this book... perhaps more than any of Miller's others, and that's saying something, because I love everything she writes.
Everyone read them so we can squee together.