The Privilege Of Magic

The most frightening villain ever to stalk the halls of a school for magic isn’t Voldemort, it’s

Designed by Will Staehle,
the cover of Magic For
Liars is memorably great.
(Image via Amazon)

privilege: the subtle, corrosive force at the heart of Magic For Liars.

At its core, Sarah Gailey’s debut novel is about how the powerful impose their will without consent, and without a second thought. These power dynamics might be portrayed within Magic For Liars as the relationship between the magical and non-magical, but they are grounded in well-observed real-world dynamics between those who have privilege and those who don’t. 

Setting the story at the Osthorne Academy for Young Mages, Gailey uses the standard tropes of the magical academy to explore notions of privilege by telling the story from the perspective of someone who lacks magical ability. The protagonist, private investigator Ivy Gamble, is the non-magical twin sister of a teacher at the school. Ivy is lead by circumstance to investigate a murder within the magical community. 

Through this set-up, Gailey interrogates themes of power, consent, toxic relationships, sibling resentment, and identity. Memorable scenes, such as when a magical healer subjects Ivy to an invasive procedure without asking, or a flashback to a practical joke her sister played on her, effectively reinforce these themes. This is a lot of heavy subtext for a novel with a sprightly cadence and breezy prose, but for the most part it works. 

Some of the things we enjoyed the most about Magic For Liars were what Gailey chose to omit. Rather than deluging the reader with endless explanations of magic or magical society, Gailey focuses on characters and motivations. Rather than treating the sexuality of characters as big revelations, the inclusion of LGBTQ characters is refreshingly natural and casual. 

The magic of privilege enables many
people to become their worst selves.
(Image via Twitter.) 

Because of the massive cultural hegemony of Harry Potter, it’s difficult not to compare any novel about a school for magicians to the one in J.K. Rowling’s best-sellers. But we’d argue that the school in Magic For Liars might more aptly be compared to Eton College, the famous privilege factory that has churned out generations of upper class twits such as David Cameron and Boris Johnson. 

Some have suggested that the book is more comparable to Lev Grossman’s The Magicians than to the Harry Potter series. This is in part due to the age of the students and the mature tone of the books. Most notably, the ability — the privilege —of doing magic enables characters to be their own worst possible selves. Interestingly, Ivy Gamble is a far more likeable protagonist than Quentin Coldwater.

When dealing with characters and their relationships, when dealing with magic as a metaphor for social stratification and when dealing with implied politics, Magic For Liars succeeds, but as a mystery novel, it is somewhat unsatisfying. The investigative threads are occasionally obvious, and the lack of observational acuity among the school faculty beggars belief. Most troubling is the convenient trail of notes left for the protagonist — most of our book club found it too simple to be considered a puzzle.

Gailey’s prose oscillated at times between light and engaging fantasy and noir detective pastiche. Some readers found this tone switching distracting, especially in early chapters where the overuse of similes was especially annoying. One reader almost didn’t finish the book because of lines like “The drought-impossible velvety green lawn that surrounded the school looked like frosting that was waiting to have a finger through it.” It was suggested that this tone might have been intentionally over-the-top to evoke hard-boiled detective prose. 

But despite these quibbles and qualms, it is a book that we recommend. We suspect that it will appeal to many Hugo voters, especially given how the protagonist reminded at least a few of us of Elma York, the hero of Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo-winning The Calculating Stars. Much like York, Ivy Gamble is a flawed narrator who deals with anxiety and impostor syndrome, and much like York, she challenges systems of privilege and power.

We look forward to reading Gailey’s subsequent works.

Will Staehle and the joy of minimalism

While the Law of Parsimony (aka Occam’s razor aka “the simplest solution is often best”) isn’t a

Will Staehle designs
minimalist covers that
convey a lot with clean
lines and balanced art.

(Image via Amazon.com)

perfect analogy for the joy that can found from a simple, elegant piece of artwork, it’s what got us thinking about the highly technical and complex nature of visual arts that are admired by most science fiction fans.

At least, that’s what a review of the past 30 years of works by Hugo-shortlisted artists indicates. For example, it would be hard to describe the efforts of Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme, Julie Dillon, Donato Giancola or Michael Whelan (to name a few) as simple or lacking in detail.

This is not to throw shade on any of these artists (whose work we admire), but rather to note that pretty much universally, the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist category has a bias towards complexity. This unfortunately seems to crowd out certain other styles of art, particularly the work of artists who deftly convey meaning with minimalist constructions.

A prime example is the fact that Will Staehle has yet to receive so much as a nomination, despite more than a dozen years creating lucid book covers for an impressive list of of high-profile science fiction authors including Annalee Newitz, Michael Crichton, Sarah Gailey, Terry Goodkind, Charlie Jane Anders, Stephen King, Sam J. Miller, Ernest
Cline, and more. Both Robert Jackson Bennett and Adam Christopher have called Staehle’s work ‘genius.’ Cory Doctorow has praised him as ‘brilliant.’

Staehle has become the
go-to guy for several
big-name authors.
(Image via Amazon.com)

But unlike those working in more ornate – and occasionally rococo – styles that seem to dominate the Hugo Awards, Staehle hews towards the minimalist. He often works in high-contrast blocks of colour that all fall within a select palette – sometimes employing as few as two or three hues. Communicating effectively through art is a high skill, regardless of the piece’s complexity.

Consider the cover for Cory Doctorow’s new four-story collection Radicalized, which takes Staehle’s iconographic approach to its current apotheosis. Creating an iconic representation of themes in each of the stories, he creates a memorable image unassailable in its simplicity and refinement. Staehle’s produced new covers for all of Doctorow’s novels, including an ingenious die-cut dust-jacket for the hardcover of Walkaway (a design which works best if you are looking at a physical copy of the book).

Possibly Staehle’s most iconic cover in recent years was his illustration for V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade Of Magic, which he has written about. Again working with a very small palette, Staehle conveys the dynamism and panache of the story in a balanced and evocative image that easily communicates both the character of the book’s protagonist Kell, and the world-hopping premise of the narrative. They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but in this case Staehle’s art is a large part of why we read it (and we’re glad we did.)

In terms of eligibility for the Hugo Awards to be presented in Dublin this summer, Staehle designed the covers to 2018 releases such as Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Boneless Mercies

(Image via Amazon.com)

by April Genevieve Tucholke, The Outsider by Stephen King, the U.S. edition of Circe by Madeline Miller, the cover of State Tectonics by Malka Older, and the cover of The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander.

Only one quarter of the way into 2019, and this year he’s already crafted covers for Radicalized by Cory Doctorow, The Institute by Stephen King, and Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey. We are almost certainly going to have him on our nominating ballots again next year.

Like all of the creative arts, interpretation and appreciation of visual art is subjective. However, it would be very difficult to deny the talent and inventiveness that Staehle brings to the elements of line, colour, space, light, and shape. We would suggest that he should receive serious consideration for the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist.