Brian Burt's Blog: Work in Progress - Posts Tagged "magic"

Last week, I blogged about how the book Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD led to a turning point in my oldest son's treatment for a rare, devastating illness called PANDAS. This week, I wanted to share a wonderful fiction series by Jim Butcher called the Dresden Files. If Saving Sammy was the cure for my son and our family, the Dresden Files was the pain medication that made life bearable during the darkest days.

During the times when our son's brain was literally on fire from inflammation, only one thing gave him any relief: the Dresden Files novels. My wife and I would take turns reading to him, sometimes all day long, until he finally grew exhausted enough to fall asleep. It became our ritual to keep the neuropsychiatric demons at bay. Thankfully, this is a long series (11 books at that time, I think; now 15 and counting). We would finish a book, immediately move on to the next, and wrap around to the beginning again when we finished the last book in the series. We could not have asked for a better fictional world in which to take refuge!

The protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a wizard for hire; basically, a PI with a blasting rod and staff instead of a pistol. Imagine Merlin fused with Sam Spade and you're in the ballpark. Harry is a wisecracking, irreverent guy with a dark past and unbending core principles that often make him reckless to the point of being borderline suicidal. In many ways, he was the perfect symbol of hope for our family. He was forced to battle dark forces against which he had little control and slim odds of success; he routinely got bruised, battered, and beaten to a pulp; but he never gave up and always came back for more. And, ultimately, he always found a way to defeat the evils he confronted. You gotta love a magical knight with attitude!

Jim Butcher has filled the Dresden Files with many memorable characters to complement Harry. There's Thomas Raith, Harry's half-brother, a White Court vampire who literally battles his inner demon to avoid turning to the dark side. Karrin Murphy, an indomitable sparkplug of a cop, refuses to put up with Harry's chivalrous protectiveness and fights at his side against things that would send grizzled police veterans screaming into the night. Molly Carpenter, the Goth girl turned apprentice mage, allowed her adolescent indiscretion to put her very soul at risk and now must use her growing powers to help Harry without crossing the line that will trigger her summary execution. And of course there's Bob, the disembodied spirit that lives inside a skull and serves as Harry's sidekick, providing an encyclopedic knowledge of magic delivered with a sarcastic spin and a ribald sense of humor.

That's the beauty, the brilliance of this series. It's chock-full of dark magic, dreadful supernatural foes, relentless action, memorable twists. But - at its heart - it invites the reader to become part of a vibrant, dysfunctional family of characters that makes you feel at home... and makes you care deeply about what happens to them. Each new Dresden Files novel seems to set the bar higher, which is a tall order for a series that started so strongly in the first place.

A great story can be strong medicine. It was for us, and remains so as we eagerly await each new offering from Jim Butcher's Dresden-verse. If you ever need to escape your own dark reality for a darker realm of imagination where hope stubbornly blazes on despite overwhelming odds, this is a great world to visit!

Sometimes the good guys are the bad guys, and the bad guy is the good guy. I've always loved stories that can invert the archetypes like this. I'll also admit - unabashedly - that I relish well-written speculative fiction that is categorized as "teen or young adult." Maybe I'm young at heart... or just immature, as my wife constantly reminds me... but I often find these stories to be as compelling, clever, and wise as any adult fiction. I loved the Harry Potter series and the Hunger Games series. Fantastic storytelling! But, for me, neither boasts a character as memorable as Bartimaeus, the fourth-level djinni from Jonathan Stroud's wonderful Bartimaeus Trilogy.

I stumbled across these books on our regional library network's Digital Library, and I'm ecstatic that I did. Stroud creates a mesmerizing world here, with the story primarily set in an alternate London where the government is run by magicians. There is a delicious thread of political satire woven through the tale: the elite magicians who run the country and control the empire are arrogant, venal, self-aggrandizing, and surround themselves with every luxury at the expense of the "commoners" whom they supposedly serve. They're parasites who wield their power wholly to enrich themselves. (After the past few weeks' interminable RNC and DNC media pageants, this hits a little too close to home.)

Adding insult to injury, these human "magicians" don't really have any true magical power. Instead, they use their arcane incantations to forcibly summon higher magical beings from the "Other Place," drag these spirits into the human world, and bind them to the magician's will. In essence, magicians enslave the immensely powerful creatures they call "demons" and force them to complete a charge or mission before releasing them back into their own non-corporeal realm. For these "demons," being trapped in physical form exacts a heavy toll and erodes their vital essence over time; the longer their period of servitude, the more tormented and depleted they become. Understandably, the demons detest magicians and distrust all humanity. They use all of their guile, subterfuge, and cunning to look for any loophole in the magical contracts that bind them to their human masters; if they can wriggle out of those bonds, they pounce on their summoners and eagerly consume them, freeing themselves in the process. Magicians may rule with an iron fist, but they do so knowing that one misspoken word can doom them.

That brings us to the real hero of this trilogy, the unquestioned star of the show: Bartimaeus, a demon of middling rank from a class of demon (djinni) of middling power in the hierarchy of entities from the Other Place. Bartimaeus isn't the most potent magical servant around. He's often aimed by his masters at opponents with far more firepower. What he lacks in raw strength, he more than makes up in cleverness, creativity, and bravado. What endears him to the reader, though, is his biting wit, his sardonic sense of humor, and his insight into the flaws and foibles of the humans with whom he interacts. As an outside observer of humanity, he sees the best and worst in us with crystal clarity... and doesn't hesitate to tell us what he sees.

As the trilogy unfolds, we also discover something else about Bartimaeus: he has far more sympathy for those rare humans in whom he detects bravery, virtue, or at least a wisp of conscience. He provides more help than strictly necessary or even risks his own welfare to save the young humans who become hopelessly embroiled in the most perilous plots hatched by the most evil of the magician elites. He always justifies this behavior, tries his best to convince the reader that he really had a selfish motive. But - just as he sees through our human rationalizations - we see through his. He may be sarcastic, insulting, and less than trustworthy... but he's a sucker for an idealistic boy or girl fighting for a noble cause.

This isn't a Disney-style storyline. There are dark moments here, heroes don't emerge unscathed, and victory doesn't come without a dreadful price. Yet another reason to savor this tale. Like Bartimaeus himself, this trilogy can be fearsome, and funny, and illuminating when it shines its spectral light into the darkest corners of human nature. Introduce yourself to Bartimaeus when you get the chance. He may not fit the classic definition of a fantasy hero, but you won't soon forget him.

#SFWApro