Review: The Glass Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

Ceony Twill, the paper magician apprentice, made her master's heart out of paper and used his paper airplane to go after the heart his ex-wife, now an excisioner, cut out of his chest.

Time moves on and Ceony continues to face odds and dangerous people, one who is so intent on destroying her, they will blow up and destroy whoever happens to be close. Ceony, undaunted and willing to reach for any tool she can learn to use, including her best friend's glass magic, she also learns how to bond to other magic arts. With what she believes are two excisioners chasing her and having managed to successfully slip the "noose", Ceony faces two dangerous men with unknown powers and magic, willing to do what needs to be done to keep her master -- and her love -- intact. Walking through the chambers and anatomy of another's heart will change not only her goals, but her skills and her own heart.

It is outside the bounds of protocol and reason for an apprentice to fall in love with her master, but extraordinary circumstances call for unusual and even more extraordinary choices. Such is before Ceony and the magic world as she battles for her and her friend's lives and learns that nothing is impossible with determination, luck, and love.

Charlie N. Holmberg's magician series is not just a turn of the century fantasy, but so much more. in 1907, there is a great school of magic, and Ceony Twill gave up her cooking career, enrolled in the premier magic school, and finished far quicker than anyone in her class and in what she knows of the history of the magicians' arts and schooling. Ceony is working hard to finish her apprenticeship ahead of schedule even though she still must deal with her master's ex-wife and the excisioners traveling and terrorizing the countryside, and especially Magician Emery Thane for casting a spell on Lira, Emery's ex-wife. Grath Cobalt, one of Lira's gang of excisioners using blood magic to upset the well ordered magicians' school and training, is determined to force Ceony Twill to reverse the spell that stopped Lira, but did not utterly destroy her. Cobalt will, like Ceony when facing Lira and rescuing Emery's heart, do whatever it takes to free Lira from whatever the paper folding apprentice did to thwart Lira's vengeance on Emery.

Sound a bit convoluted and dangerous? Not for a glass magician who will have what he wants whatever the cost.

Grath is not an excisioner like Lira because he was already bonded to glass. Somehow, some way, he must break the bond in order to bond to blood magic and become an excisioner. That is where Ceony Twill comes into the picture.

Ceony confessed her love to Emery and doesn't know how Emery feels. She considers choosing another master, another discipline, but she is bound to paper and cannot, by all she knows, break the bond and does not want to start all over with another Folder magician who can train her. She also doesn't want to leave Emery. She loves him, though it is forbidden, and not even Delilah's master is going to have an easy task enforcing the rules.

Delilah, Ceony's best friend, is an apprentice glass magician and helps the Folder apprentice to understand and perform a little glass magic of her own. After all, she must save Emery again. Emery Thane is a formidable magician in his own right and has assisted the police in capturing excisioners before. Must have something to do with his ex-wife, whom he loved and married, becoming a practitioner of blood magic and revenging herself on him.

The duel of magics between Ceony and Grath reminds me of  rock, paper, and scissors which I played as a child. How does paper stand up to glass when the magician can go anywhere and see anyone whenever he chooses? Mirrors are made of glass and mirrors are all connected if only one has the magic and is willing to learn -- and to teach. All it takes is an agile mind and the will to do whatever it takes to cross boundaries and disciplines. That is what Grath has been willing to do ever since he met Lira and followed Lira's lead. What Grath can do Ceony will do as well. She will not be only a Folder for long.

Charlie N. Holmberg has created a world wherein magic is the most potent power and where villains as poisonous as Lord Voldemort are often more dangerous and patient -- to a point. As for me, I can hardly wait until June when The Master Magician is released.

Billed as YA, The Paper Magician and The Glass Magician, though they contain violence, the violence is perpetrated out of plain sight and not described in bloody, gory detail. Imagination is as potent as seeing the violence first hand and no less frightening or horrifying. In many ways, violence in the Magician series by Holmberg is the difference between dropping a boulder in a lake and hearing about the ripples and waves caused by someone else dropping said boulder from one's own hands. Not having a video replay of the violence doesn't lessen the impact for readers exposed to violence in the world where they live and learn.

The Glass Magician is a laudable continuation of the tale begun with The Paper Magician and will continue the game of rock, paper, and scissors people play when they are young and making choices. 4/5 stars for this leg of Holmberg's magical journey in my estimation. As readers will find, folding paper is as formidable as glass.

Review: The Bastard's Grimoire

An evil wizard turns Casper Namlos into the hell version of a father of bastards. In short, the ill favored runt uses his bull-sized propagator to fill prostitutes with babies that burst their way out of the mothers' bodies moments after being plowed in much the same way the movie Alien far before movies or John Hurt's encounter with a predatory alien on some far flung planet in search of the next corporate payday. Joseph Hirsch begins his tale of raising Satan and his minions with a bloody battle between pirates and the defenders of a zollschloss (Bavarian castle) full of every bit of research the author gleaned in preparing for this fantasy. Like many authors unwilling to waste hours of research about the architecture of medieval castles, Hirsch sends an avalanche of the tiniest architectural feature of the castle on top of the avalanche of the technical aspects of pirate attacks without so much as a clue about how that fits into the advertised story.

After three chapters of information overload without a nod in the direction of the story of the bastard, Casper Namlos's connection with the murderous and greedy pirates, how Namlos ended up imprisoned in a barrel lined up to have his head chopped off by a giant, dipped in Greek fire, and flung into the castle courtyard, or how a mermaid came to be part of the cargo imprisoned in barrels, Hirsch finally ends up in a house of prostitution run by the mother inferior (Mother Superior), which puts the whole "Get thee to a nunnery" line from Hamlet into perspective, where the eldest bastard lusts after one of the prostitutes candle girls with big breasts and not much else to call an asset.

Once the story finally gets moving, the bastard, who hunts moss to caulk the leaking ships in port on his off hours and dreams of the dwarf who will be his future master and take him sailing the fjords and oceans, protects the bawdy house and watches the girls, Lyudmilla the object of his lust, from between the daub and wattle walls. Casper Namlos arrives at the door and pays the Abbess in silver ingots for one of the candle girls' time as long as it is in the basement, fills the girl with his abundant seed, and slips away as a demon bursts from her body to be killed by the bastard with one of the Abbess's dead husband's magic sword, saving the bawdy house, the girls, and the other younger bastards from death or worse.

The Bastard's Grimoire is a disjointed, confusing, and sometimes interesting tale of evil and magic and eventually love, though what the reader would consider the main characters make brief surprise appearances with few connections to each other -- or to the reader. What story there is -- and that is very slow going and sparse -- is readable, but only just. Without sufficient backstory, Hirsch's novel is one step above an unconnected collection of anecdotes that are somehow connected. Being written partially in German and that German not part of the mainstream canon slows the book farther and muddies the narrative waters.

The bastard -- and there is no clear indication if that is Namlos or Martin Stolzer the virgin bastard of the bawdy house -- possesses no grimoire and, other than the prodigious propagator on Namlos and Martin's relationship with Lyudmilla and the dwarf (a rock head who got away from the endless toil of hewing and shaping rock for the town cathedral to become an illuminator of religious texts in a monastery) little more is known. There is Martin's penchant for unter dem pantoffel (under the slipper which is German for the more modern pussy whipped), his virginity, and his friendship with the dwarf that render him moderately interesting. Not much more can be said for the novel or Hirsch.

Though I give The Bastard's Grimoire 3/5 stars for the few readable parts of the fantasy, I would suggest reading the novel for yourself and judge accordingly. One reader's dissatisfaction is another reader's potential favorite -- or might be in any case. Keep a German to English (or whatever language) dictionary at hand. You'll need it to understand much of the story, which is long on mystery and information dumps on zollschloss architecture and short on everything else that makes a good story, including characters, motivations, and grimoires, though full of bastards.

That is all. Disperse.

Review: Deadlight Jack by Mark Onspaugh

From the Pacific Northwest to the Louisiana bayou, Mark Onspaugh's latest tale begins with 4-year-old George Watters and ends with Tlingit-Inuit Shaman Jimmy Kalmaku, ghosts, revenants, and all the horrors that Professor Foxfire musters against the 70-year-old Jimmy and George. Professor Foxfire is only one of the many names of the nightmare that is Deadlight Jack who lures children away from their families to feed the swamp lights and Jack.

George Watters lost his father in World War II and then very soon after lost his grandfather. That was when Deadlight Jack first appeared to lure 4-year-old Georgie Porgie pudding and pie away from his family and into the swamps of bayou. If not for George's grandfather, George would have been lost to his mother and brother to provide a tasty meal for Jack. George's mother and his aunt got in Jack's way and, with George's grandfather, drove Jack and his green and yellow will o' the wisp lights back into the shadows. Jack would not be held off forever, not with such a one as Georgie Porgie nearly within his grasp.

Seventy-year-old George Watters is a wise-cracking, smart-mouthed jokester given to teasing Jimmy Kalmaku with every Indian reference he can remember -- and George remembers a lot. For all the ribbing and jokes, George and Jimmy are close friends. They have already defeated the Faceless One who nearly destroyed a family and dragged Jimmy and George into the abyss for good measure. Jimmy has a wild talent and is a favorite of the Trickster, Raven of Tlingit legends. Being a favorite of the gods is a heavy burden to bear, one Jimmy is used to. George is no unwelcome passenger on the journey into the darkness and neither are strangers to the unseen world. George and Jimmy are friends and comrades in arms, though neither are ready for the journey that will lead them into George's forgotten and tumultuous family troubles when George's grandson, Donny, disappears while on a camping trip in Louisiana.

Jimmy prepares to visit his son's family to celebrate his granddaughter Molly's birthday in Boston when the calls come. Donny reaches out and shatters George's dreams with his terror and fear. Jimmy is visited by Dabo Muu, another messenger from the unseen world, in a vision that sends both friends far from their home on 152nd Street. When Jimmy calls Molly to explain he will not be there for her birthday, Molly tells her grandfather he will need to help George and that she will help as she can. Molly shares the wild talent with her grandfather, unknown to her parents, and Raven has also enlisted Molly in his service.

The journey into George's past and his family troubles is no picnic, but neither is the task of finding Donny and defeating Deadlight Jack, especially when the energies that Jimmy knows best will be of little help so far from his cooler northwestern home. The real journey is still ahead as George is confronted with a past he cannot remember and a daughter who is still angry that George was never there for her.

In creating a world where two men of different backgrounds and cultures become so intimately entangled, Mark Onspaugh illuminates the good and the bad in his characters. The world George and Jimmy inhabit is as rich and complex as the Louisiana bayous where much of the action takes place. The cover of Deadlight Jack is a pleasant fantasy beside the horror and evil unleashed on an unsuspecting world going back centuries and rooted in the myths and legends of a much darker past than the average person realizes or is willing to see. All of the characters, from George's bitter eldest daughter to delightfully precocious Molly are revelations. Jimmy's shamanic heritage and George's amazing gifts are the heart of gold at the core of this dark and bloody tale of the world that marches beside the reality most people are willing and able to see. Strength and magic blossom in the most wonderful and unexpected ways. I cannot wait to read what else Onspaugh has written and has yet in store for the future of this mismatched and ultimately wonderful pair of modern wizards.

5 stars and I only with the scale went up to 10. A rich and satisfying journey that awakens an unforgettable magic in all of us to follow an unlikely pair of friends into the shadows where evil dwells.

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

A discontented, talented, but unfocused Harry Potter goes to college – sort of.

Julia walks best friends Quentin and James to a college interview and leaves them at the door. Inside, Quentin and James find their interviewer dead and call 911. One of the paramedics, a beautiful woman, hands Quentin a manila envelope with his name on it and inside he finds a copy of a sixth Fillory novel, one that was never published, and a piece of paper that the wind snatches out of his hands. He chases the paper along the cold Brooklyn streets and ends up struggling through a hedge into a sun-washed green expanse of lawn. Quentin has arrived at Brakebills College of Magic. His life will never be the same.

Quentin Coldwater, amateur magician, wanders into a world where magic is not practiced sleight of hand but real, magic that can be measured by physics and science. As a young man who keeps looking for the next best thing and finding he already has it and yet looking still, Quentin Coldwater is a wimp with occasional flashes of gumption and passion. He floats along on the tides of life waiting, always waiting, in Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. He is no Harry Potter. There is no doom hanging over his head and no powerful dark wizard to battle – yet.

Quentin is a complex, facile and infuriatingly frustrating character that walks numbly through a world of possibility and beauty never satisfied with what he has. He is not willing to plumb the depths of his intelligence and ability. Still, Quentin is mesmerizing, and The Magicians is an intricate and complex story with a simple theme: Be careful what you wish because you are about to get it.

Grossman is no less frustrating because he deliberately leaves the tag ends of information dangling. That is not to say that The Magicians or Grossman are disappointing—quite the reverse. Lev Grossman is a wizard of words and worlds deftly weaving a spell with familiar tools. The story is familiar: A youth trembling on the verge of adulthood unsure of the worth of learning and his path. It’s a situation many young adults raised on a diet of fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons face in the 21st century.

If you’re expecting a more adult version of Harry Potter, you’re out of luck. If, however, you’re willing to follow wimps and slackers sharing moments of brilliant insight and brutal honesty between bouts of drunkenness, fights, magic and sex, The Magicians is where you’ll find it. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll leave Grossman’s tightly crafted world with a growing sense of wonder and a question: What is Quentin’s discipline?

The gods are watching -- and meddling

Sometimes I get ahead of myself, double checking facts and data and still getting things wrong because I was in a rush or was distracted, as when mailing out packages. As I told one friend, I'm an idiot. Oh, well, admit the mistakes and move on. That's how I usually deal with things. It doesn't pay to keep hashing things over and over and beating myself to a pulp. I don't look good in bruises. Blue and Black are my colors, just not when there's skin involved.

It's one of those days when I'm running behind schedule and the harder I run to catch up the more behind I get. It's the usual follow-up to a really good day like yesterday. I don't need a slave standing behind me in the chariot holding a laurel wreath above my head reminding me I am just a human not a god. I've seen the job and I don't want it anyway. Being a god is boring, else why would the gods spend so much time taunting, teasing and otherwise messing up humans' lives? Only gods would grant someone the gift of prophecy and then turn around and curse the prophetess so that no one ever believes her. The gods must have been regular humans at some point who were more advanced and more intelligent than the rest of humanity and got so bored with being perfect and untouchable that immortality was a curse and a burden rather than an opportunity to continue evolving and shepherding humans to the next level. Let's face it, slapstick humor is funnier than intellectual humor because it resonates with the most basic instincts, someone else is getting reamed and, boy, it looks funny. In situations like that, it's best to point to your own folly before someone makes it a bigger deal than it is, hence my confession about mixing up addresses on packages and the contents of said packages. I prefer to think of it as a misfire in synaptic firing.

And then there are those that feel they were instrumental in another person's success. No one succeeds alone, although most of the time it seems like it. A lot of people, most of them unknowingly, helped me get where I am today. Every story and article I edited taught me what not to do and how to use my strengths to best advantage. All the articles, essays, stories and poems I looked at and decided whether or not to publish, all the writers I taught, every piece of advice (good and bad) I heard and chose to use or discard, every person who believed in me, every editor who took the time to offer help and school me, every person who read one of my stories and told someone else, and me, what was good and bad, and every single person who read my work helped me become a better writer. No one's input was without value, even when it wasn't right for me, and I owe every one of them my heartfelt thanks, and I do thank them.

Writers believe they write alone, but no one does anything alone, at least in the sense of being touched by others and touching others. Every moment, every experience, every thought, everything is part of the process and becomes part of the writer and the finished work. Whether or not the debts are acknowledged, they still remain.

Everything we do, see and are is due to the blending of internal and external forces, a symbiotic relationship that is as frustrating as dealing with the gods and just as rewarding. It's magic and it's worth it.

That smile

Riding the subway or bus or train every day, life tends to fade into the background, just so much static and noise at the edge of awareness. Focusing on a book or a newspaper, knocking out a few more notes or closing the eyes and listening to whatever's on the iPod helps maintain the fiction that there is actually a cushion of space, insulation against the press of working humanity. That's all you need, a little bit of space. One face blends into another and another until you are immersed in a sea of blank faces all trying to preserve a little bit of personal space, a cushion of protection that separates you from the press. You've learned to ride the bumping and swaying like a surfer on a wave, a boxer rolling with the punches, a stunt man absorbing the energy of a fall and turning it into a roll that brings you to your feet to be ready for the next sway, the next bump, the next shock of contact.

In Jean Auel's first prehistoric novel, Ayla, a very curious little girl, ugly and gangly, all legs and arms and eyes, is adopted into the tribe by the Mogur, the shaman, and his sister, the wise woman and healer. It is hard for her to avert her eyes, keep from invading the huddled figures around the other campfires. It's all so new to her, these people who shelter in caves. She has yet to learn that to stare at the other family groups is disrespectful and rude. She's curious. She wants to know what the strange short, dark, gnarled people are like. She is a child, an intelligent and curious child. She wants to know, but she is reproved and cautioned against invading the others' privacy repeatedly until she finally learns to tune them out, until their lives lived in such close proximity is little more than a blur of images and sounds that no longer penetrate her awareness. It is the only way to live in such close quarters and maintain a little privacy, a little distance, a little personal space.

When does personal space become isolation?

Craig's List has a section for missed connections. A face in the crowd that coalesces from the static and touches something inside still not numb from the constant barrage of noise and bodies. Out of the greyness, the cacophony of humanity, comes a glimmer of color, a whiff of something that triggers a memory or a feeling, a glimpse of possibility. At that moment, the isolation is broken and you are infected. The disease is relentless. You must get closer. You want to reach out, to touch, to connect, to assure yourself that they are real. You miss the connection, but the infection has taken hold and fever sets in. You can't rest until you connect again. And so you send out a carrier pigeon, a paper bullet in hopes that they noticed you, too.

Red Line, 4:30 p.m., that smile.

You reach out and wait for an answer, some sign this isn't a one-way connection. You're alive again. You feel. You want. You need. You can't stop smiling. You're not alone.

How often in the busy day do the minutes and hours blur into an unrecognizable collage of what should be done and what must be done? Chores, bills, work, responsibilities, expectations, and mindless hours in front of the television or computer. Those moments when something out of the ordinary wakes us up are rare. They get rarer with time and age. A fleeting connection is a gift, a remembrance of excitement that infects with joy and magic. How sad to waste them, fall back into the anonymity in the surging sea of humanity, to disappear into the static, to become one with the predictable grey blur. Isolated. Silent. Lost. Disconnected.


that smile.

Breaking barriers

For months I have written and submitted essays to Common Ties. Today, I got my reward for all the hard work. They bought one of my essays.

Many of the essays and stories I have written and submitted to them have been the product of a lot of hard work and emotional mining. They ignored me. Since they receive so many submissions they don't have the time to respond to everyone. Being ignored is the equivalent of a form rejection. I've been having some difficulty coming up with something to write for their latest topic: weddings. I didn't have anything good to say about them, although I've been in several weddings, designed and made dresses and gowns for weddings, and even appeared in two and the deadline was looming fast. I didn't have anything to say. Imagine that (and no comments from the peanut gallery, please). Tuesday morning I still didn't have anything but I kept freewriting and thinking on paper about what I had to say about weddings. I find it difficult enough to pull out the sad emotions or even be inspirational on purpose, and I couldn't even rely on that. Then something hit me.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief. I finally had a hook, time to bait it. And so I wrote and wrote and wrote and edited and wrote. I was late starting work Tuesday morning but I felt what I was writing was more important than earning a paycheck and I could make up the time (and I did until 2 a.m.) I came up with The Five Stages of Wedding Grief. Common Ties bought the essay. Then came the fun part, and I don't mean contracts and details.

I have a small keepsake album that turned up in the things I brought back with me from Ohio in February when I went to visit my father. It holds pictures of my first wedding when I was young and innocent. For the first time since I bought it, I used the scanner on my HP 4-in-1 and scanned all the pictures in the album and a few more that I also found in the Ohio things. I won't post all the pictures of the wedding until Common Ties decides which picture they will use to illustrate the essay on Tuesday, July 3rd (did I mention that's the day my words and picture will hit the web?), but I thought you might enjoy seeing some other pictures I found, including one my mother sent me by Priority Mail a couple days ago that's part of a Xmas card I made when I was six years old and in the first grade. Yes, I actually wrote what's on the front of the card and, yes, I actually did know how to write in cursive in the first grade. I scanned a few other pictures and they are here.

At the ripe old age of five months, just two days after my husband was born.




My parents and me when Dad was stationed at Fort Hayes and before we went to Germany



My husband-to-be and me on New Year's Eve 1973



My mother's brother, Bob, and his wife, Lois. I'll bet they don't remember being quite so young.



Beanie and my groom's sister, Jenny. Beanie is eight years old and taking her duties very seriously



My maid of honor and sister, Carol. I wanted my best friend, Connie, to be my maid of honor, but I lost



The bride



Bridesmaids and flower girls



The grandparents



The Hatfields & McCoys Cornwells & Woodards



The getaway vehicle. It's not the car the wedding party and assorted pranksters decorated, just the one they nearly tipped over with us in it




Yes, I'm excited, more so than you can imagine. Common Ties is a hard market to crack but I cracked it and I'm getting paid for my work. It was interesting calling my ex-husband. His wife was home, but he wasn't so I left a message. I need to get his permission to use his name or I have to use a pseudonym, something I don't want to do, even though I do have one (or two).

Sometimes it's a matter of hard work and editing and struggle to get published and sometimes, at the very last moment, something clicks and magic happens. The thing about magic is that it happens more often when hard work and editing and struggle come first. Writer's block happens, but there are ways to get past the block even if you have to tunnel around and through or just simply take another route. The trick is to keep writing even if it seems like pointless gibberish because out of the dross and dirt will shine diamonds and pearls that sparkle and gleam with magic. The words are there. All you have to do to break the barrier is never give up looking for them.

That is all. Disperse.