Magical Mysteries !! « The Quintessential Q

Monday, February 27, 2006

Magical Mysteries !!

this was a post that i had made on the pagalguy.com's "Books to read & recommend" thread. since the reply was something i was planning to write anyway on the blog, here's the CCP.

i'd classify the magical ouevre into three basic blocks:

1. Wizards & Cauldrons
2. Magical Beasts: notably Dragons
3. Demons , mostly Djinns, Imps et al

The Harry Potters, Chronicles of Narnia and to some extent LOTR would be under the wizarding type. mostly you'd find an evil villain who has to be vanquished by our underdog hero. in most cases, the hero is not a magical apprentice but actually pretty well versed in magic. he/she might be inferior to the villain in capabilities, but would provbably score over in courage, fortitude, character <yawn>..you know the type. these books are easy to read & enjoy, the reader can easily relate to them. mostly, there'd be a remarkable lack of width of magic displayed - if you go by what the author says, mostly a solid dose of british common sense is enough to knock the bonkers out of any evil plan

Magical Beasts, are the most complicated of the lot. They LOVE their dragons - the more talon-ted, the better

complicated magic coupled with a huge reverence for the firebreathers. the two fiery examples i've read are The Eldest Trilogy of Paolini & Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time series. what i love about the series is the sheer depth & range of magic invoked in all the books that you'd read. fascinating reading, if you dont mind the over-abundant love for dragons. surprisingly, no other beast manages to get that much attention. you do have flyng centaurs, unicorns, gargoyles etc, but these are cannon fodder

but make no mistake, i love dragons too

after reading Arabian Nights, probably no other writer of the Demons genre could probably hope to feed himself by writing about evil demons & how they can turn you into frightening rich princes & even more frightening paupers. as a result, most demons that you'd get in literature now are wise-cracking, side-splitting, laugh-a-minute riots who'd make you go double every couple of lines. they'd probably be accompanied by half-witted magical apprentice boys in their teenage splendor. the series would have humour, leg-pulling and some action later on. examples are Bartimaeus Trilogy of Jonathan Stroud, Myth Series of Robert Jordan, and the works of that author of so many classics - Terry Pratchet. if you love your humour more than you love your magic, go for these. happy readings and happy endings are what these guys would specialize in..but hey! whoever heard of comic tragedies

Posted at 01:02 am by Lord Q


	Zing-Zong March 28, 2006 04:15 PM PST I love dragon's too.....interesting...hehe...what about dragoness's and dragonlets.


	Karishma March 9, 2006 09:51 AM PST Dear Quintessence... Now of course u were sitting closer to Laksh...coz u were participating!! i dunno who Kira is on PG... Thx for ur comment though... FMS we came for mayhem...dint win though...as can be seen in my post... Dint see u there either...not that i wud have recognised u...:P


	DJK March 8, 2006 11:09 PM PST Let's write a book of magical potions and love spells. If not for anything, the book will sell like hot cakes for the "L" thing ;)

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