lightreads

Earth Logic (Elemental Logic Book 2)

4/5. *helpless gesture* Uh. It's fantasy? About elemental powers? But mostly about peacemaking? Except anything I say is inadequate and inaccurate, so.

Laurie J. Marks infamously has not yet finished the fourth volume in this series. In somewhat similar fashion, the audiobooks are being produced at the rate of approximately one every two years (hint: it doesn't normally work like that). You'd think this would drive me nuts, but it actually doesn't. There's something . . . meditative about taking these books so slowly. I mean, I don't know how you can think of only three books as a whole set of prayer/meditation beads, and yet, that's where my mind goes.

Anyway, yes, this series is awesome, and unusual. The obvious stuff first: it is populated by a lot of queer and generally non-normative people who build complex and beautiful poly families, and we don't have to have a whole big fuckin' thing about it. Less obviously, this series is subversive as hell in that it actively counters standard fantasy narratives. The appropriate response to violence in this book, in the end, is not violence. How rare is that?

But I think the most extraordinary thing about these books is the magic. It's elemental, like I said, and the "logic" of the title is part of the magic. The power comes as much from character as from, like, birthright. This became clear to me when I was jaw-droppingly outraged by a particular set of character actions in the first third of this book; they were just so obviously idiotic to me, I was astonished. What was wrong with these previously intelligent people? …Ah. Yes. I am not a fire blood. That is one success of these books, creating a personality-based magic system so interesting and accurate that I feel genuinely alienated from those parts of it that I don't understand. Gryffindors, WTF