The Magic of Words

Growing up, I cut my teeth in Prydain and Narnia. I grew up in Krynn, Middle-earth, and the world of The Lost Swords. I spent hours imagining what if…? What if the places were real? What if the powers and the weapons were possible? What if I could reach into those pages and be a part of that reality. Apparently, I was in good company.

Jim C. Hines grew up thinking the same thing, only he took and ran with it and, as an adult, brought it to life in his urban-fantasy novel Libriomancer, the first of the Magic Ex Libris series. Hines has taken the power of the written word and given it magic – real magic. The belief of readers, thousands upon thousands of readers reading the same text, gives a small group of magic users the ability to literally reach into the pages of a book and pull out whatever they can visualize from the narrative (swords, ray guns, potions). As long as it can fit through the size of the book, it can be manifested. A fascinating magic, Hines does a solid job of working through the logistics of his magic system, creating rules and playing his own version of ‘what if’, which is where the book really takes off.

His main character is a real bibliophile and enjoys nothing more than getting lost in the power of the magic he wields and trying to discover its limits and possible uses. It’s clear that Hines enjoys this too.  Every time we came to a section where the limits of the magic system were tested, I could feel the writing and the story pickup. I could sense Hines own excitement at what he’d created.

The challenge was, similarly, I could feel it wane whenever he wasn’t exploring the magical elements. The quest, the romantic love interest, most of the minor characters - all of those needed the same spark of excitement that the magic held.

This was a solid telling and a world I’d like to return to, however I’d like to see Hines bring the same sense of wonder to the non-magical elements of his world as he did to the magical ones.