[Summons Gnarly Powers]

I have, of late, been reading fantasy novels.

Now this might be due to the overload, but this is how I’m feeling about books featuring people with those gnarly powers right about now.

It could very well be I’m just reading books in which the magic systems are too pedestrian, or books in which the plot is just a romance novel under a thin veneer of fantasy.

It could also very well be that the “person with gnarly powers uses said powers to fight other people with gnarly powers” trope is just worn a bit thin on me.

Not that I don’t love a good fantasy. I look to the likes of Lord of the Rings and The Book of the Dun Cow/The Book of Sorrows and see stories coming from a worlds filled with magic. But y’see, while magic may exist in these books, it’s the little characters relying on their own inner magic of faith, grit, hope when all is hopeless, that keeps me coming back. That’s real magic, not any of this elemental-bending stuff.

That’s easy ju-ju, no matter the training the little wusses have to go through to master the act.

But watching Cano Mundi stab Wyrm in the eye with the horn of the dun cow and die in the act to save the world (for the five minutes it remains saved), now that’s magic.

Watching Samwise Gamgee go back up the stairs of Cirith Ungol after Frodo screams at him to go home, now that’s magic. (Recall: Most of the magic seen in LOTR is used for evil.)

Not that I don’t like magical novels. Magic, done well – even if it’s done as parlor tricks, as in Terry Pratchett’s novels – is a fun thing to read. And try telling me the magic in Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell isn’t fun to witness, especially when mice are involved. Maybe I’ve just read a string of mediocre, magic-filled novels, and am ready for something else.