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Elves? Pre-history? Epic? Ever since Tolkien, these have been stock formula fantasy fare. Right?
With all this in mind, I decided to load The Start of Magic on my Rocket and take it to bed with me in the hopes it would help me sleep.
Sleep, nothing. I hate reading on my P.C, especially late at night, but before transferring The Start of Magic to Rocket Librarian, I decided to take a quick look to see what I was getting into. That was a major mistake. Instantly hooked by Bob Rich's poetic opening sentences, the next thing I knew it was three a.m. The only creature to get the benefits of my electric blanket that night was the cat. Worse yet, I had to be up at seven.
Like a rabbit caught by oncoming headlights, I was totally mesmerized by this glorious tale of three incompatible peoples and their conflict's tragic outcome. Blinking back to reality from The Start of Magic's vivid world, I was cramped, stiff and cold, and sorry it was only a story.
While there will be inevitable comparisons drawn between The Start of Magic and Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear, in this reviewer's opinion, there's no contest. Between its story's elegant grace and the deceptive simplicity of Bob Rich's lyrical writing, The Start of Magic wins hands down, and I look forward to more such prehistoric epics from this masterful Australian talespinner.
Kate and I did a 'review swap: I read and hugely enjoyed her book, A circle of Arcs, and she did the same for me, choosing The Start of Magic from among my titles. This is what she says about herself:
The author of the eleven title Nublis SF/Fantasy Series and a historical time travel, A Circle of Arcs, Kate Saundby is a 2001 Eppie finalist in two categories. Before turning to fiction in 1996, she wrote op ed pieces for various newspapers for 25 years and is a self-described political scold. Samples of her work may be found at http://www.realmofnublis.com and her titles are available at CrossroadsPub http://www.crossroadspub.com/.
Title: The Start of Magic
Author: Dr. Bob Rich
Genre: Mythological Fiction
Publication Date: October 2000
Formats: html, pdf
Price: Download: $5.95, CD-ROM: $8.95
Heather, a girl living in the forests of Northern Siberia seven hundred years before Christ, belongs to a race of tiny people called the Ehvelen. These hunter-gatherers dwell in harmony, following the tenets of "the Mother" and sharing equally in life's duties and pleasures. But one terrible day Heather and several of her companions are attacked by a group of Doshi, warlike nomads who have set up camp on the plain across the river. The Doshi kill Heather's male friends and take her and another young woman prisoner. The other girl escapes, but Heather becomes a slave and the unwilling lover of Aram, a Doshi leader. Although she longs to return to the Ehvelen, Heather grows to love Aram, and she becomes friendly with some of the Doshi and their slaves.
Meanwhile, the Doshi return to the forest to destroy the Ehvelen, but they have underestimated the "midgets", who use their phenomenal hunting skills with deadly effectiveness. The Doshi start to believe that the Ehvelen possess magical powers, but they regroup and plan a massive assault. Heather is desperate to escape and warn her people. How can she accomplish this, especially after she becomes pregnant?
We know from other stories in the Ehvelen series that Heather escapes and that she becomes a great war leader, but that doesn't keep us from enjoying The Start of Magic, which the author "translated" from part of a huge mass of material written down by a descendant of the Ehvelen in 892 A.D. More episodes will be published later. This is fortunate, since The Start of Magic ends with a cliffhanger as the Ehvelen and Doshi forces prepare for battle.
In this novel, we learn a great deal about the Doshi. They are fierce, brave, and ruthless, and they treat women as possessions. Some of them, however, are also kind and loving, within their limitations. Heather responds to their humanity and shares her healing and musical gifts with them. In the end, she must overcome her own tender-heartedness and the despair brought on by slavery. Indomitable, courageous, and intelligent, Heather is an amazing, admirable woman, a wonderful representative of the Ehvelen.
The story is filled with authentic detail, and some of the characters are quite intriguing, especially a wily trader named Moustaf from the Areg Empire. A consummate wheeler-dealer, he has his own plans for Heather and her people. Other characters are almost interchangeable, as are several skirmishes between the Doshi and Ehvelen, which are often described as they happen and then again as the participants recount them. This slows the pace a little, but is appropriate in a story rooted in oral tradition.
Dr. Rich provides helpful notes at the end of the book, as well as tantalizing excerpts from tales yet to come. The best thing about The Start of Magic, and about the Ehvelen series in general, is that the more we read, the more we want to know.
Ilene Sirocca is a freelance reviewer. meadlark@sgi.net. She has reviewed every one of my e-books so far, and I have learned lots about the art of reviewing from her.
Start of Magic is a perfect title for a book that is magical - not in the way of wizards and spells and mages, but the magic of people faced with overwhelming odds and not only winning, but keeping their values strong.
Heather is a young woman of the Ehvelen, a nation of tiny people living deep in the woods of Central Europe around 700 BC. Her people didn't know that one human could be the enemy of another. So when strangers arrive in their woods they step forward to offer greetings. Heather is taken prisoner and her friends killed by the warlike Doshi.
Not only is Heather now faced with a life of slavery, both physical and sexual, a value previously incomprehensible to her but she is forced to confront the reality of a world her people can't imagine exists: a world in which one human being can own another, kill or mutilate another. As Heather struggles to keep her spirit alive under the crushing weight of slavery, she realizes that the Doshi are a threat to much more than she, herself. That they intend to return to her lands and enslave all her people. Only Heather has the knowledge to save them.
Dr. Bob Rich has created a rich world. He writes beautifuly about the life of the tribes, the simple day to day practices of travelling, healing, giving birth, cooking, their tents and their mud huts. He manages to effectively interweave such commonplace things of all our lives with a great and ancient human dilemma: when a peace loving people unwittingly come into contact with warlike nations, can they survive? Or is their only choice to become equally vicious, or to die?
Both the battle scenes and the life of the peoples as they gather around the fire are effectively and realistically drawn.
Dr. Rich clearly has a love of the Ehvelen equal to that of Tolkien for his Hobbits. The book provides us with an insight into the customs, history and language of the Ehvelen. The Start of Magic is the first part of a comprehensive series on the history of the Ehvelen. I am looking forward to reading the rest.
Vicki Delany's contemporary thriller Whiteout is an EPPIE 2001 winner. Therefore, her good opinion means a lot to me. Her web site is at http://www3.sympatico.ca/vdelany.
Torn from her idyllic existence, Heather is enslaved by the Doshi, a culture in which a man isn't a man until he's killed an enemy and a woman isn't a person... ever. Heather's people, the Ehvelen, live in harmony with nature and the day Heather is taken is "the day when the Mother started to forge us into Her sword against slavery, cruelty, exploitation" according to the Ehvelen storyteller reciting Heather's story.
The Start of Magic is not sword-and-sorcery fantasy. By most standards, it's not fantasy at all but rather, speculative history. The "magic" in the title is implied, not overt. There are no towering wizards spouting lightning from their fingers, no dragons and no mind-control more powerful than the sort perpetrated by modern advertising--then again, that's pretty powerful and destructive in its own right. No one in this book wears designer clothing and for lack of commercial tie-in potential, it's doubtful The Start of Magic will ever become a big budget movie.
Which is a pity, as this is a beautifully written novel, elegant and flowing, one that should be on everyone's "must read" or "must reread" list. Heather is a compelling character, fully developed with a realistic range of strengths and weaknesses, a person who will linger in most readers' minds long after the book is finished. That said, it also must be noted she is unique among the Ehvelen in her complexity. In general, the bad guys in The Start of Magic are bad but do have some human qualities--they treat their women and other pets well. Some even seem fond of Heather as something other than a potential bed-mate, although most ache for her and the other Ehvelen women that way. The good gals (and guys), however, are good--overly so. One longs for an Ehvelen Iago or Falstaff, or an Ehvelen female who doesn't inspire instant lust in Doshi males.
But that's a minor caveat. Bob Rich crafts first-rate fiction and fully admits he has an agenda to promote sustainable development and to decry consumer "culture." Considering the quality of his writing, that is probably the reason he remains "only" an e-book author. The Start of Magic is undoubtedly a better book than almost anything in print, or that has been in print in the past ten years.
The Start of Magic is available from Anina's Book Company
J. Crispin-Ripley is a Canadian author who writes about fame, celebrity and other illusions. He considers taking oneself too seriously the ultimate crime against humanity and thinks if people laughed more at the pretensions of those who call themselves "leaders", the world would be a far better place. In his opinion, Shakespeare is the only writer worth stealing from, which is why everyone does exactly that, whether they know it or not.
Crispin-Ripley's first novel, "The Wrong Places", a comedy of manners masquerading as a mystery, was published by Double Dragon Ebooks in January of 2002. He has also written "The Image of Christian", the first volume of a polemic fantasy, and "Adornments of Glory", a quasi-epic fantasy. Sample chapters of these novels (and eventually, others), some short fiction, and links to his publisher can be found at his home page, Efigments.
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