Tavin is an exile from his community and his people – the
mages. Born with only a scrap of magic and barely considered adult, he is
content to remain in the human world, desperately seeking normality and to
forget that the Mageplane ever existed
Except soon it might not, which, with the return of his
brother, brings Mage politics to his doorstep and the sudden need to protect
his friends from the potential fall out of desperate mages seeking anyway to
preserve their home
Take an Olympic sized swimming pool
Fill it with thick, dark molasses.
Attach heavy weights to your wrists and ankles.
Now try to swim to the other side. This experience will
approach the pacing issues of this book. When I reached the half way point and
absolutely nothing of consequence had happened – indeed, most of the cast don’t
even leave one house – I was beyond tired of it and stopped reading. I normally
can read a 300 page book in less than two days – this is a bit longer than
that, but it was 4 days before I hit the half way mark because it was so slow
and I found myself finding excuses not to read.
It’s not that there are no redeeming features of this
book – far from it. The world setting is fascinating. The idea of a parallel mage
realm with its own culture that is so very archaic and formal and both alien
and impressive is really well built. The consequences of it collapsing and
dumping all of these magically powerful but culturally inept people into the
real world would be an epic thing to explore. The nature of magic is really
well described and built with lots of complexities and implications as to how
it works, why the Mageplain is dying and what that means for Mage politics and
conflicts and how the various powers manifest and interact and truly work.
There has been a lot of effort put into make a very comprehensive magic system
that is very real and fully fleshed out
But all of this is explained in a serious of truly
tedious info-dumps, many of them nothing more than convoluted internal
monologues with all this information just randomly splurged onto the page. Much
of the rest is explained in a series of painfully awkward lectures from
informed characters to the ignorant – without even the excitement of the
ignorant being shocked are surprised by the revelation. The fact that magic
exists and there are alternate universes out there is taken in stride with
about the same level of shaken surprise one would expect from discovering a new
and interesting condiment at the dinner table. The book is positively allergic
to any kind of drama – any kind of action – that doesn’t involve Tavin’s trainwreck
of a love life.
To add to this lack of any real action or drama, we have
an enormous amount of padding between the info dumps. Long inserts of various
character’s histories shoe-horned in there – yes it gives the characters more depth,
but without any action or story to link it to, it reads like a series of random
biographical excerpts about people I have been given no real reason to care
about. Between that we have Tavin musing about his garden, endless long
passages about music, his general angsting, fretting and pouting about
everything, Amelia’s little holiday in Paris which, by the time I gave up on
the book, was completely irrelevant to absolutely everything but was still taking
up unnecessary page room. There’s a ridiculously long and unnecessary scene of
them playing dress up, just because, Beyond that, even the simplest activities –
cooking, eating, playing music – needs to be described in excruciatingly
unnecessary detail.
Now to the romance trainwreck:
Ben, Tavin’s friend/supposed love interest is gay – and he
is described in very stereotypical terms. His mannerisms are “theatrical”, he
uses the word “fabulous”, he is “dainty” and “delicate” and “terribly
flamboyant” and his smallness is emphasised.
Tavin is bisexual – called the “Witchell Curse”
apparently. With a very very strong preference to women. Through the book this
is emphasised both in general (in those ENDLESS monologues) and directly to Ben
by referring to his only past lover – a woman – in glowing terms. How, if he
had to marry anyone, it would be Amelia. Even the one time he described Ben in
anything approaching appreciation for his body it was when he was dressed as
Coco, referred to by female pronouns and repeatedly emphasised that Coco was a
perfect female illusion and in no way, shape or form was thought of as male, or
even as Ben. That same level of interest has never been directed at Ben as Ben.
Despite this, they’ve been maintaining a quasi-romantic
relationship for 6 years – 6 years after which Tavin still regards kissing as
icky and has a deep horror of any kind of physical intimacy. Fine, that’s Tavin
and his desires – but he shames Ben for wanting for, for actually being sexual
while at the same time constantly teasing him with both physical intimacy
(sleeping together, lots of touching) AND hints that one day Tavin will totally
be ready for more – just be patient (and listen to him describe how wonderful
some women are some more).
If this book made me feel for any character it was Ben, I
would have wanted to be his friend so I can intervention him at what a disaster
his relationship is. That Tavin would never give him what he wanted and would
never let Ben go either, constantly teasing Ben with what could be while
simultaneously shaming him for his desires and using him to fulfil Tavin’s
intimacy needs. Then I would probably leave Ben alone because he’s not much of
a character beyond a collection of stereotypes sewn together, but I’d help him
with that utter trainwreck of a relationship.
And to top it all off, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for
Tavin even aside from his treatment of Ben. He laments that his society treats
him like a child, but that is how he acts. He is grossly self-centred, very child-like
and entitled in his thinking fully expecting others to revolve around him, his
needs and his time table. He derides and judges his brother for what he views
as a decadent lifestyle, while his brother is actually dedicating his life to
trying to save their society from collapse – and to top it all off, Tavin
actually views said collapse with eager anticipation because it will make his
life easier. Yes, he has reason to fear the extreme actions some mages will
take to prevent the collapse – but he barely acknowledges the devastation for
his people he is actively wishing for – it takes Lyvance, his brother, to see
that.
This book had a lot of potential, a truly amazing
potential. But it then drowned that potential in the gloopiest, slowest, most heavily
distracted writing I’ve read for a long time – and topped it off with a
character who has made me steadily more angry as the book progressed and a
shallow, stereotype laden portrayal of a gay man that only managed to gain
sympathy from me because of the way he was treated.
