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Od Magic (Library
Brenden Vetch has a gift that connects him to the agricultural world, nurturing gardens to flourish and instinctively knowing the healing properties each plant and herb has to offer. Receiving a personal invitation from the wizard Od to become a gardener for her school in the great city of Kelior, he finds a home among every potential wizard who must be trained to serve th...more
CD-ROM, 1 pages
Published
January 1st 2009
by Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.
(first published June 6th 2005)
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McKillip is a pleasure to read. She writes these little books that are more like fairy tales than they are anything else. They are finely drawn, beautifully detailed, perfect stories that make you think of the beautiful miniatures of another era. She borrows themes from old fairy tales and weaves them together into something surprising and new.
She doesn't write with the depth or character development of someone like Guy Gavriel Kay, but they're not meant to. While he writes novels t...more
She doesn't write with the depth or character development of someone like Guy Gavriel Kay, but they're not meant to. While he writes novels t...more
I think the best thing about this book was the cover art…and that is where the interest ended for me. I am a little surprised that this book got so much praise from other readers because I actually found myself drifting off and thinking of other things repetitively while reading this book. It was that boring! Don’t get me wrong because the book wasn't horrible, but just not memorable. In addition, the plot and characterization seemed so simple it was almost like it was written for a child or a t...more
Centuries ago, the mysterious giantess Odd founded a school of magic in the heart of the king’s city. Wizards learn there, magic ruled and regulated by the state. And once in a while Odd shows herself again, sending someone of her choosing down to the school as she does Brenden, the wild and untrained gardener of enormous natural power. Brenden is just one of many magicians in this book – the frustrated teacher tired of ruling his magic and his tongue, the king’s daughter secreting away her tiny...more
It took me awhile to remember where I got this book. There it was in my bookshelf -- magically appearing! And by one of my favorite authors, Patricia McKillip. After awhile I remembered that I'd bought it in California at a discount bookstore just before I moved back to New England. It got packed up and unpacked three thousand miles away with my other books, then left to sit there until last Sunday, when, looking for a book, I grabbed it on the way out the door as we went whale watching.
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McKillip is absolutely wonderful at writing fantastic stories, but in this book she made so many odd choices (no pun intended). I think the main problem is that she wanted to tell too many stories and, for me, I felt that she focused on the wrong one. Brendan's story, so well developed in the first chapter, was not touched upon nearly enough, and for most of the plot he seems a backdrop to the princess and Tyramin. This also leads to the problem that there are far too many "main characte...more
Odly enough, I didn’t find Od Magic to be as poetic as other McKillips I have read. It felt more as though it were a compilation of other of her stories.
We start with a sad story of Brenden Vetch nursing his brother and village through a terrible disease after losing their parents in the initial onslaught of the illness. His brother takes off into the world while Brenden chooses to stay and thoroughly immerse himself into the magic of the natural world around him. As Brenden roams, ...more
We start with a sad story of Brenden Vetch nursing his brother and village through a terrible disease after losing their parents in the initial onslaught of the illness. His brother takes off into the world while Brenden chooses to stay and thoroughly immerse himself into the magic of the natural world around him. As Brenden roams, ...more
Brenden Vetch is a strange gardener who listens to the world. One day he is recruited by Od to be a special gardener at her school. Od is a driving force but a silent one during the novel. She saved a city in exchange for the right to found a school of magic. Instead of becoming a place of discovery and learning, the school became restrictive and political. No magic was allowed to exist in the kingdom unless it was controlled by the school and the school did not attempt at extending their knowle...more
Patricia McKillip is one of my favorite writers. I have been with her since I first read The Forgotten Beats of Eld. For a few years, I was out of the loop and had not picked up one of her books. I had Od Magic in the house but never read it. In late summer I read it and just was carried away. McKillip's prose reads like poetry. It is dense but never too much so. Her descriptions are lyrical and sensual. I always feel like I have stepped into her stories. She creates mythology, taking s...more
This was a truly beautiful tale with exquisite prose. There is a distance in the storytelling that gives it a folk legend or fairytale feel. There were times I longed for the intimacy of the more traditional novel because I felt as if I wanted to know Brenden better than the prose would allow. Brenden remains distant and frightened of the designs of those in the world around him. We see his feelings and actions, but not so much his character, if that makes sense.
There are many threa...more
There are many threa...more
not my favourite by her, but decent enough in it’s own right. the story follows a guy who likes plants (as well as a wizard and a princess, three perspectives to tell the same story, from different angles) who is asked by the founder of a magic school to be a school gardener. he accepts and goes off, finding out that he has magical abilities himself.
brenden, the guy, isn’t the typical protagonist. he’s extremely introverted and nearing the end of the novel he runs away from someone who is ...more
brenden, the guy, isn’t the typical protagonist. he’s extremely introverted and nearing the end of the novel he runs away from someone who is ...more
Before this book, my favorites of Patricia McKillip were Winter Rose and The Riddlemaster trilogy. Now, Od Magic is a serious contender to replace these two. I know I should let a few days pass , to let my enthusiasm cool and maybe do a review, but I've been thoroughly enchanted by the story here.
What threads link and draw together "a gardener, a trick monger, a sentence in an ancient scroll"? Od Magic is the journey to find out. It starts up in the northern wastes of Numis...more
What threads link and draw together "a gardener, a trick monger, a sentence in an ancient scroll"? Od Magic is the journey to find out. It starts up in the northern wastes of Numis...more
I can see all the pieces she created--a sorrowful young man from the country who listens to plants and is asked by the giantess wizard Od to be the gardener at her school, the kingdom of Numis where the school and its wizards are limited in their study by the needs and strictures of the king, a traveling performer named Tymaris who may possess wild magic, and the king's willful daughter bethrothed to a wizard that won't talk to her--but damned if I know by what magics McKillip pieces it al...more
Od Magic was my first book by Patricia McKillip to read. This type of fantasy is not my normal thing, but I was drawn to the cover art. Since the story is not my usual style, it took me a while to get into it, but eventually, I was hooked. The author tells strange fairy tales, and this one was about a magical gardener, a boy who understands plants the way the wizard Od understands animals. They're both wild sort of people who prefer being alone with nature to society. But there are other in...more
Jennifer
rated it
·
review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of fantasy
Recommended to Jennifer by:
Miryam
Shelves:
fantasy
I just finished this book, and I loved it! It is prose that reads like poetry, something that current novels are definitely missing much of the time. McKillip's writing did take longer to read because of her syntax, which is unique, but the experience was well worth the time. The most fascinating part of the book was her commentary on power. McKillip tells us that it is, after all, pointless and self-defeating to try to restrain that which we do not understand. In McKillip's created world, ...more
This book went off to a slow start, although the premise was good. It dealt with the kingdom of Numis, where all magic is under the control of the king and his pet wizards.
The book wasn't on track, from what I could see, as it started with a boring opening that seemed to have little to do with the cover blurb. I kept reading hoping it would get better, and it did for a while. Then it seemed to forget all about the main character, and the ending was more of a sideline that brought him...more
The book wasn't on track, from what I could see, as it started with a boring opening that seemed to have little to do with the cover blurb. I kept reading hoping it would get better, and it did for a while. Then it seemed to forget all about the main character, and the ending was more of a sideline that brought him...more
This is a book about seeing past the end of your nose and that you can not define the world by what you want to believe is real. If you struggle to make yourself heard, you will find sympathy in this book.
Good book; not her best. I'll forgive her for cribbing a quarter of it from Harpist In the Wind, even though she didn't turn himself into a fish when she was turning him into stuff. (I always liked the fish thing.) It's quite good up till the last chapter, which reads like she was up against a very short deadline. You want to say, "Oh no, PM, too trite, too pat--he gave in way too quickly--gimme a break." Maybe she was out of disk space, or something. But I liked the many wild, d...more
This reminded me of "A Wizard of Earthsea" and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" combined, twisted, and spiced with McKillip's mysteriously earthy writing style. I enjoyed it. I have to admit that I kind of wanted Yar and Arneth and all the almost rebels to really become rebels and run off to that mountain, tap the power within the mysteries and fight the close-minded into open-mindedness. But that would've over complicated the book and probably spawned sequels and so ...more
See my review at:
http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue1...
http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue1...
I loved this book. It is so like Patricia McKillip, it is light and fanciful. She is always wandering in fantasy worlds. But I loved this one. Basically a community gets hide-bound and tight and a group of people come through the town. They are tumblers, theater people, full of play and magic and they terrify the powers that be. It just struck me, how serious our lives are. OK, maybe I'm talking about my life but really, everyone needs more glitter, masks, music, costumes and Play. And lots more...more
What a beautiful book! I can't figure out why McKillip is not feted the way Le Guin is whenever she has a book come out. She draws such strong and gentle characters, and has such a lovely vision of what might be - it makes you want to take up residence in her fictional world. And, like Diana Wynne Jones, she shows how unjust power structures often must be plunged into chaos before they can be made just.
I haven't said anything about the plot, I realize, so if you're interested you'll...more
I haven't said anything about the plot, I realize, so if you're interested you'll...more
I'm starting to think you have to read McKillip from a very right-brained perspective. Od Magic is all mood and veils, with its thin characters moving along a thin surface along their different stories. The result is a little too slight when the short page count is divided amongst so many subplots (actually none even emerges as a main plot), even for the effortless style she's concocted. I really would've been intrigued by a whole novel about a garderner wizard, or one about the performing magi...more
The story begins with a gardener arriving at a school for wizards, and soon, other colorful characters are added to the story: an ancient, white-haired giant with animals nesting on her body; a street magician and his daughter, traveling with wagons of colorful performers; a princess learning the "little" magic of needle and thread from her great-grandmother; a young warden roaming the streets of the Twilight Quarter, caught between duty and love. All of these characters have stories o...more
Joell Smith-Borne
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Shelves:
sf-f,
recommendations-for-people-who-ask
I just love Patricia McKillip. Her stories are so expectation-defying, in just wonderful ways. In this book, not every major character gets paired off, the bad guys are really more gray than black, and turn out to be redeemable, and the big climax is like the opposite of a fighting and killing or defeating sort of event. It's still so engaging and absorbing, though, that it's not until I was thinking about it afterwards that I realized that nothing had worked out the way I thought it would.
At first I wasn't sure I was going to like this book. It required more focus from me than most, and reading while managing a classroom took a bit of mental muscle building. After I got into it, I realized that the main characters weren't the people through whose eyes the story was told. The main characters were Sorrow, Wonder, Fear, Perception, and others like them. The story was told in words, but the real story lay in the images and occurrences that went almost unnoticed: in the way Sorro...more
A fairytale set in a world where monarchs rule over everything including the use of magic that helps and threatens the very existence of the land of Numis.
But the wizards are about to choose their fate towards the use of their gifts.
McKillip weaves the magic thread of creating a world where marriage of princesses and princes are a part of their duty, and Love- is but a chance.
But the wizards are about to choose their fate towards the use of their gifts.
McKillip weaves the magic thread of creating a world where marriage of princesses and princes are a part of their duty, and Love- is but a chance.
I'd give this 2.5 stars if I could. The story wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. There wasn't much to the characters. Brenden was the most interesting character, but he wasn't around for a good chunk of the novel. I'm a sucker for magic schools and this one was decently interesting (although I shamelessly compare all magic schools to Hogwarts).
So deus ex machina, that it might be entitled God's Magic. A wilful giant decides through somewhat roundabout means to illuminate the facts of her ancestry, subverting the lawful authority of the King and his appointed guardians of magic. Also there is sketchy romance.
Many echoes of the Earthmasters from the Riddlemasters trilogy, here much more sympathetically dealt with. Lots of characters are sketchy, the King especially and really so is the story, but this is by no means a debil...more
Many echoes of the Earthmasters from the Riddlemasters trilogy, here much more sympathetically dealt with. Lots of characters are sketchy, the King especially and really so is the story, but this is by no means a debil...more
I have a weakness for McKillip books. Her writing is breathy and ethereal, a kind of magic in itself. She always manages to draw me in and wrap the story around me so tightly that I dread the book ending. Od Magic is classic McKillip at her best. This isn't her strongest book but not her weakest either - it's a good solid offering filled with whimsy and gorgeous prose. Highly recommended for anyone that enjoys fantasy and magic. McKillip can be wordy at times and is prone to long passages of des...more
"With lyrical prose, well-limned characterizations, vibrant action, a sense of the wonder of magic, and a generous dollop of romance, this is a story that will bind readers in its spell." - Booklist
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Patricia Anne McKillip is an American author of fantasy and science fiction novels, distinguished by lyrical, delicate prose and careful attention to detail and characterization. She is a past winner of the World Fantasy Award and Locus Award, and she lives in Oregon. Most of her recent novels have cover paintings by Kinuko Y. Craft. She is married to David Lunde, a poet.
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