Benedict Jacka's Blog, page 86

To the Forbidden Planet

Off to the signing of Fated at Forbidden Planet!  Should be there for 6pm.

Fated: Good Reviews

A very nice featured review from Katherine Petersen at SFSite:

Benedict Jacka will become a favorite for fans of Jim Butcher, Simon Green and/or John Levitt. His recipe for success combines believable and well-developed characters, lots of action, enough suspense to keep one up all night and a new twist on magic. While some of the characters represent black or white, the majority, including our hero, have a lot of gray areas . . . Fated is one of the strongest first books in a series I've read in a long time, and a series I will definitely follow to its conclusion. Few writers have mastered the ability to bring so many different types of characters to life so vividly.

And March's print edition of RT Book Reviews has some good things to say too, though this one isn't available online just yet:

Jacka gives us a labyrinth-like plot with complex, well-constructed characters.  He does a great job not telling us all about his enigmatic protagonist, but instead giving hints as to what makes him tick.  UF fans will love this unique look at mages both dark and light, as well as other creatures of Jacka's vivid imagination and a narrative that will put you in a magical frame of mind.  

 

Encyclopaedia Arcana #6: Dark Mages

Dark mages are the counterpart to Light mages.  At various points the two factions have fought against each other, most recently in the Gate Rune War of the twentieth century, but at present Light and Dark mages share an uneasy peace.

Dark mages don't have a centralised organisation as Light mages do.  There's no Dark Council and there's no Dark administration.  In fact, it can be difficult to know whether someone even is a Dark mage – it's not like you can apply for a membership card (and other Dark mages wouldn't pay attention if you did).  If being a Light mage is like being a citizen of a country, being a Dark mage is more like being a follower of a cause or a religion.  What makes you a Dark mage is the way you act and the ideals you believe.

Dark Is Not Evil . . . Maybe

Dark mages follow a philosophy called the True Path, the True Way, or simply the Path or the Way.  The True Path holds that someone's reality is defined by their personal power and the only goal that has any long-term value is increasing that power.  Traditional morality is seen as an artificial construct:  while it can be beneficial in certain situations, it places limitations on the user's ability to pursue power and therefore has to be discarded.

If power is a virtue, the corresponding vice is weakness.  Dark mages consider voluntary weakness to be the one really unforgivable sin.  Anyone who turns away from power is giving control of their life to whoever is willing to pursue that power, and by doing so they prove themselves unworthy to wield it.

What that means in plain English is that if a Dark mage wants something from you they'll take it, and if you can't stop them it's your fault.  You aren't owed anything and you don't deserve anything.  If you don't like it, learn to take care of yourself.

Dark Society

Dark 'society' is a bit of a misnomer.  Dark mages don't like each other, don't help each other, and don't trust each other.  For this reason Dark mages are notoriously bad at getting along.  The more Dark mages there are in a group, the faster they'll fall out unless they have some immediate reason to stay together.

The unit of Dark society is the household or cabal.  A household is made up of one Dark mage plus his apprentices, servants, slaves, and other hangers-on.  A cabal is a group of Dark mages who have decided to band together in a pack – their numbers vary but 2 to 5 is the most common size, as once the group gets much larger than that internal divisions start appearing.  Larger groups aren't unknown but typically require a strong leader to keep them in line.

That said, Dark mages aren't hermits and they do socialise.  It's common for Dark mages to hold gatherings, competitions, and parties where they can meet each other, watch their apprentices compete, and share information under a temporary truce.  However, these events are much smaller than the grand balls sponsored by the Light Council.  A typical Dark mage knows far fewer of his colleagues than a Light mage does.

Strength and Weakness

The previous few paragraphs probably makes it sound as though Dark mages really aren't much of a threat to Light mages.  If they can't work together, what's the problem?

The short answer is that Dark mages are dangerous because they don't work together.  Most Light mages aren't battle-mages – there are vast numbers of Light mages who've never seen real combat.  But every single Dark mage who graduates from apprentice status knows how to fight and how to defend themselves.  They have to, or they don't survive.  Dark mages aren't invincible but they're tough, nasty, and above all experienced, and one for one Dark mages are probably the most dangerous men and women in the world.

Most Light apprentices and younger Light mages are afraid of Dark mages and avoid them whenever they can.  Even the ones who aren't scared usually keep their distance, believing (correctly) that the more closely involved they get with Dark mages the more danger they'll be in.  All the same, there are a fair number of Light mages who associate with the Dark.  Sometimes it's from necessity – Keepers and the other enforcement branches of the Council have to deal with outsiders as part of their job – but just as often it's for personal profit.  The lifestyles of Dark mages often bring them into contact with hidden secrets or unusual techniques and bits of knowledge, and they're sometimes willing to share them.  Such help can be valuable to a Light mage, but it's never free and the price is always high.  Many unwary Light mages who entangle themselves too closely in Dark politics end up incurring debts they can't repay, losing friends and possessions, and in some cases vanishing without trace.

Signing Fated at Forbidden Planet next week

Just a reminder that I'll be signing early-release copies of Fated at Forbidden Planet next week, Thursday 23rd Feb from 6pm to 7pm.  Here's the event details!

I've got some reviews and interviews in the pipeline too, but I'll wait to post those until they're ready.

Encyclopaedia Arcana #5: Light Mages

There are two main power blocs within mage society – Light mages and Dark mages.  Mages who don't side with either are called independent or unaligned.  Of the two factions, the Light mages are by far the more organised.

Dark Is Not Evil, Light Is Not Good

This is probably the most common misconception amongst newcomers to the magical world, so it's worth getting it out of the way first.  Light mages are not necessarily good people, for reasons that should be obvious.  Calling yourself a 'Light mage' doesn't make you a servant of light any more than calling yourself a 'good person' makes you a person who's good.  Even if they were originally set up as a bastion of goodness to stand against evil (which mage historians argue about), the Light faction is an organisation, not a status.  Old members leave, new members join.  Light mages have existed for thousands of years and their society has had time to evolve a very long way.

Asking whether modern Light mages are good is a lot like asking whether your country's government is good – it's a very simple question with a very complicated answer.  Some people will say yes, a lot will say no, and in most cases the answer you get will tell you more about the person you're talking to than about the Light Council.  The Council is very large and very powerful and like all large powerful organisations it has a lot of enemies, many of whom hate it for completely unjustified reasons.  Others hate it for completely justified reasons.  It depends on the history.

In terms of alignment, a better way to think of the Light mages as opposed to their Dark counterparts is as order vs chaos.  The Council and Light mages as a whole stand for order.  They effectively run the magical world – there's no other body with anywhere near the combined power and influence of the Council, meaning that any kind of governmental functions fall to the Council by default.  The Light Council are the primary enforcers of the Concord.

The flip side of this is that since the Light Council run the magical world, mages often join the Light faction not because they believe in any of its ideals but for the benefits it can bring.  In a one-party state, you have to work with the party to get anything done.  Over time this has increased to the point where it's by far the most common reason for mages to join the Council.

The Council

The phrases 'Light mages', 'the Council', and 'the Light Council' get thrown around a lot, often referring to the same thing.

The Light Council is the collective decision-making body of the Light mages of Britain, made up out of (currently) fifteen mages.  Six are non-voting members, known as the Junior Council, and nine are voting members, known as the Senior Council.  The Senior Council have (at least theoretically) total authority over all mages in the country.

Beneath the Senior and Junior Council are layers of administration and bureaucracy that take orders from the Council and carry those orders out.  These administrative arms and lower-ranking members are the face of the Council, and the ones that other people actually meet.  Confusingly, these people are also called the 'Council'.  In practice when mages say 'the Council' they tend to mean both the Light Council and everyone who works under it, in the same way that when people say the 'British Government' they can mean the Cabinet, the Civil Service, the people in between, or all of them at once.

Other mages tend to see the Council as monolithic, but it really isn't.  There are dozens of factions within the Council and they spend far more time arguing and fighting amongst themselves than they do enforcing their will on other mages.  It takes a significant external threat to get the Council to unite, and even then the factions are almost guaranteed to disagree on whether it counts as a threat or not.

Life as a Light Mage

Life as a Light mage is generally comfortable.  Being a Light mage doesn't automatically give you wealth and luxury and safety, but it gives you access to the contacts that you can use to get all those things.  Light mages rarely have to take risks or work a day job.  They tend to live affluent lives, free to spend their time socialising, researching, romancing, making money, training apprentices, or whatever else they feel like doing.

This does however come with a price:  as a Light mage you have to play politics.  Getting what you want as a Light mage usually involves dealing with another Light mage, and that mage will want something back.  Light mages have to network and make contacts, which means spending a lot of time kissing ass.  It also means accepting the authority of the Council and fitting in with other Light mages' social norms.  Light mages who rock the boat quickly find themselves left out in the cold.

Some Light mages try to deal with this by accumulating political power, associating themselves with a Council faction or otherwise making themselves important enough to have a say over their destiny.  This gives them more leverage, but comes with its own risks:  while rank-and-file Light mages live fairly safe lives, Light mages who involve themselves in the Council's political games do not.  Conflicts over power among Light mages are more subtle than among Dark ones, but the cost of losing can be just as high.

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Guest Blog: Limits of Magic

I did a short guest piece for a book review blog named the Qwillery, on the subject of magic systems and limitations to magic's power.  Go take a look!

Back from the Weekender

And I'm back home from the SFX Weekender.

First, many apologies to those whom I missed at the signing.  Transport from London to Prestatyn was unfortunately a nightmare – due to a train derailment the entire section of railway we'd been planning to use was out of action and we had to take a weird looping journey around what felt like the entire middle section of Britain before finally arriving in Prestatyn long after dark and about four hours after I'd been due to be at the Forbidden Planet stall.

Thankfully Adrian Tchaikovsky very kindly offered me a place in his signing slot, sacrificing his (very small) allocation of elbow room to give me a spot at the table, and we spent an enjoyable hour talking to fans, chatting about live roleplaying, and watching the cosplayers go by.  Many thanks to him and to Stephen Baxter (whom I was also crowding) for being so generous, and thanks to the readers who somehow managed to figure out where I was in time to find me anyway!

The Urban Fantasy panel was more nerve-racking but still fun.  I really hadn't been expecting that big an audience and seeing a couple of hundred people in the auditorium all looking expectantly at me and the rest of the panelists came as a bit of a surprise.  On the plus side, the lights were aimed at us in such a way that I couldn't actually see a thing beyond the front row anyway, which made it easy to forget how many were watching.

The rest of the weekend was spent hopping between panels, performances, and chats, of which the chats were the most fun.  I got to meet dozens of people in the business – authors, editors, agents – and had a wonderful time talking about them about anything and everything.  I'd list them all except that honestly, there are too many.  So I'm just going to say a big thank you to all of them for making it such a great weekend.  I'm definitely planning to be back next year!

Encyclopaedia Arcana #4: Normals, Sensitives, and Adepts

So far this Encyclopaedia has mainly dealt with mages.  There's a good reason for this – mages represent the greatest concentration of power in the magical world.  They don't rule every corner of it, but it's very much built in their image.

That said, the vast majority of humans aren't mages.  In fact, most estimates guess at a ratio of around 1000 normals to 100 sensitives to 10 adepts to 1 mage: in other words, mages probably only make up around 0.1% of the population.  This entry will talk about the remaining 99.9%.  Note that just like magic types these categories are fuzzy, particularly between sensitive and normal and between adept and mage.

Normals

The majority of the population of the Earth are normals.  This is the name that mages and adepts give to them – they don't call themselves 'normals' and in fact don't really call themselves anything at all, since if you don't believe in magic you don't need a name for people who can't use it.  That said, if they were to choose a name 'normal' perhaps isn't so different from how they see themselves.

Normals can neither perceive nor use magic.  It's a closed book to them: they couldn't figure it out if they tried.  In practice there's almost zero chance that they would try, because normals have a strong psychological disinclination to believe in magic.  Given any situation which has a magical and a non-magical explanation, they'll pick the non-magical explanation so long as it's even the tiniest bit believable.  If they see a picture of a spell they'll assume it's Photoshopped and if they watch a video of magic they'll assume it's CGI and if they see a mage using their powers they'll assume it's a trick.  After all, this is the 21st century – you'd have to be nuts to believe in that stuff, right?

It's possible to get a normal to believe in magic, but it's very difficult; you have to do the equivalent of hitting them over the head with it, not once but over and over again.  Doing so is rarely a kindness, as a normal who does come to believe in magic will be seen as crazy by all his friends.  Most mages find that it's much easier to let them come up with their own explanation of things.

Sensitives

Like normals sensitives can't use magic, but unlike normals they can feel it.  Sensitives are open to a wider world than normals – all the supernatural elements in the world around us, the weird and the fantastic and the terrifying and the wonderful and the strange.

It's hard for a normal to understand the workings of a sensitive's mind.  Everything is more intense for sensitives – they feel more strongly, perceive more clearly, and experience everything to a heightened degree.  This can be either a blessing (sensitives tend to be very good at anything that requires perception or creativity) or a curse (sensitives have much higher rates of mental instability or outright insanity than normals and often have trouble fitting into everyday society) and often both.  Sensitives tend to be naturally drawn to each other and instinctively recognise one another as kindred spirits.

From the point of view of mages and adepts the most important thing about sensitives is that they don't have the aversion to magic that normals do, so if they see magic being used there's a much higher chance that they'll figure out what's really going on.  In fact, sensitives can actually perceive magic to a limited degree.  They can't analyse it with the precision that a mage can, but they can sense that something weird is happening, even if they don't know exactly what.  This means that a sensitive is much better equipped to enter the magical world.

That said, most don't.  The majority of sensitives are born, live out their lives, and die without ever getting involved in magical society.  From their point of view this is probably for the best.  A sensitive's abilities give them a way in to magical society but don't do anything to help them survive in it, and unusual as they are sensitives fit better into the normal world than into the magical one.

Adepts

Depending on how you look at it an adept is either a sensitive who can also use magic, or a mage who can only cast one spell.  Adepts can actually access the magical spectrum, if only a small sliver of it, giving them one particular 'trick' that they can use.

The life of an adept can be hard.  They fit into mundane society even less well than sensitives do – sensitives can feel that there's a wider world out there, but adepts can actually reach out and touch it, and that doesn't make it easy to blend into normal life.  On the other hand, adepts don't fit into mage society either.  Mages tend to look down on adepts, and even if they didn't most adepts just aren't equipped to handle the sorts of things mages can.  Caught between the two worlds, it's difficult for an adept to find their place.

There's a lot to be said about adepts, and the questions of exactly what they can do, their history with mages, and the difference between a mage and an adept will be the subject of a future Encyclopaedia Arcana entry.

SFX Weekender tomorrow!

I'll be at the SFX Weekender from tomorrow until Sunday!  Here are the events I'm currently scheduled for:

Friday 3rd – Signing and Early Release

This will be 2pm-3pm at the Forbidden Planet stall (with Ben Aaronovitch).  It's the first time copies of Fated will be available for sale in the UK!

Saturday 4th – Panel Discussion: What Is Urban Fantasy?

This is due to start at 11am.  I'll be there representing Orbit, and also present will be Ben Aaronovitch, Paul Cornell, Stacia Kane, and Sam Stone, with Mark Charan Newton moderating.

Hope to see you there!

Forbidden Planet signing and early release 23rd February

For those who can't make it to the SFX Weekender but would still like an early UK copy of Fated, I'll be doing an early release and signing on Thursday 23rd February from 6pm to 7pm at the Forbidden Planet megastore in Shaftesbury Avenue, London.  Kate Griffin will be there too with her new novel The Minority Council, so come and drop by!