Bad Magic [Hardcover]

I am rarely down right impressed by a first novel. So many times you encounter writers who have great ideas, but still need work on the art of expressing those ideas on the page. Mr. Zielinski does not have this problem. From the first page, this book packs power. It is gritty, scary, funny, sad & one of the most delicious reads I've enjoyed in months.

The characters are wonderfully weird, tacky & in some cases a little mean. Just enough to be utterly human, even in the midst of their most magical behavior.

This is also a very visual story. I could see the action & I loved it. It was like reading a comic book with out the illustrations.

Buy this book. Love this book. And pray there's a sequel.

This is an intensely realistic book. Sure, there's magic (or, if you must, "magickal technology") all over the place, but an awful lot of work has been done making the characters seem like real people (or whatever they happen to be) uneasily at home in their environment...never have I seen a description of a working mage that makes learning what he knows seem at least as difficult as acquiring a doctorate in theoretical physics.

Nothing is perfect: sometimes the studied lightness grates, and there's just a bit too much wackiness-for-its-own-sake near the end...but an author who knows where to lift from Pynchon, Burroughs (probably), Andrews Vachss, and Walter Gibson, and is good enough to acknowledge the fact, scores highly thereby.

But again, Zielinski seems to know very well that when you've dropped the reader in what is in effect a new world, and you're not about to spell everything out, well-made characters serve as a strong anchor when the setting and plot are hard to immediately understand.

I'd like to see more of this world and characters, but wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the author left it and them alone, while they're still pretty much perfect...look at the later Ringworld or Riverworld books to see why.

After that, it's just a book review.

Every fantasy author asks us to believe in a world created solely for the purpose of the story. Magic, of course, is a must. Then some number of magic workers and creatures - alchemists, vampires, elemental witches. And, of course, there are a few heroic human types to leaven the bread. Settings vary, but this time we find ourselves in San Francisco with a team of mages and warriors determined to root out those forms of magical creatures that consider humans as walking lunches. They are an Opposition task force, whose headquarters are in Seattle, and whose enemies lair in San Diego. All that saves us mundanes is a learned response to deny occult occurrences - what we won't see, can't hurt us - most of the time.

Suddenly San Francisco is the target of the vulture cult, a group that survives on human misery and anger and who will bring down the world if they can feed their god. This is an unequal struggle. Our team of eight consists of quirky individuals who argue and criticize as much as they coordinate. And the forces they are taking on are numerous, and armed with hell creatures like thin dogs and zombies. The odds definitely favor the end of life, as we know it.

For all their special abilities, the team works more like the A-Team than it does a magic circle, although their efforts at military precision often are more comic than effective. They are as likely to shoot an enemy as bespell it, but more often than not what saves them is a strong ability to beat a hasty retreat and a knack for having the right spell for the wrong reason. There is something vaudevillian about witches whose totem is a clam or houses that fly away when you press the panic button.

Zielinski keeps things going at the speed of a Chinese fire drill - there is no such thing as a time when someone isn't in dire need of help. Attitude is the rule of the day, as are wisecracks in the face of doom. What suffers in the flurry of action is character development, although all the star players are given enough initial depth to keep the reader in touch with them. Zielinski has laid the groundwork for a series with an interesting premise and sequels may accomplish what one volume cannot.

On the whole an enjoyable book, one I'm glad I took the small risk of reading. Perfect for the thrill seeker who thinks too many long incantations spoil the broth.