Can we imagine magic without words? plus a book review of the Chronicles of Tornor

Hi friends,

Happy Pride Month! I have two new blog posts to share with you. One is about magic and one is about gay magic.

Can we imagine magic that isn’t all about words? A long list of some other possibilities

Magic comes from secret words, usually spoken but sometimes written down. Sometimes you also have to be a special person. That’s how it is in most fiction nowadays. And when I say nowadays, I probably mean at least the last 100 years. A combination of words and some innate power in the magician is a literate and individualistic society’s most obvious view of magic. But where else might magical power come from? Read more

Watchtower, The Dancers of Arun, and The Northern Girl by Elizabeth A. Lynn: I re-read the very gay Chronicles of Tornor series and found that it was even better than I remembered

People with psionic powers are barely acknowledged in book one, and misunderstood and grudgingly accepted by the tolerant, while thriving in one special city in book two. By book three, they are institutions like scholars or traders not only established but involved in political power plays that corrupt their original mission. Now that I write that, it sounds a little like an allegory for gay acceptance, though it’s so subtly done I didn’t even notice that it was as I read the books. However, one thing that changes very little in the books is the acceptance of gay relationships, because for all the ways that the society might seem backwards from our own, a taboo about gay relationships is not present. Read more

Thanks for reading and see you on the internet!

AK