Bad Magic

I’m not sure who brought Bad Magic to my notice.

I get recommedations from a lot of people I trust, and if something gets recommended highly enough it ends up on my Amazon Wish List (which I use more as a ‘things I will buy’ list than a ‘things I will buy from Amazon’ list or a ‘things I hope people will buy me from Amazon’ list). Sometimes things languish there for quite a while, sometimes I get inspired to buy them sooner. (I keep most things on my list at Amazon.ca, but I also have lists at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for things that are not available at the Canadian site).

So, I can’t remember what combination of recommendations or things I read resulted in Bad Magic getting on my Wish List, but I was moved to actually buy it this week. Probably the quote from James Macdonald on the book’s page at Amazon–“Like Tim Powers crossed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You’ve never read anything like this.”–was a big part of what moved me to buy it this week. I am a total Powers fan boy.

When the book arrived, the jacket had a couple of other quotes from people who’s opinion I respect, which meant that I dropped the book on top of the ‘to be read’ queue–which is disturbingly long, by the way. I don’t know if jacket quotes really work to sell books, but I can state empirically that they can work to affect reading order after purchase. Here are the relevant jacket quotes:

“Imagine you’re in a limo speeding through the night. With you are eight weird, fascinating people, talking fast and over each other about life-and-death matters. You’re listening as hard as you can—but you’re also catching glimpses of things outside the car windows, things that suggest you’re anywhere but Kansas. All you can do, really, is hang on tight. That’s Bad Magic. It’s not quite like anything you’ve read before, but when you’re done, you’ll want a lot more.” —Emma Bull, author of War for the Oaks

“Bad Magic is nerd humor at its funniest, right at the intersection of Lovecraft, D&D, net.pervs, and the decline and fall of the American city. Enough belly-laughs to set even the largest Unix-geek-a-wobble.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Anyway, I read the book last night (it’s a slim, and fast, read), and quite enjoyed it. The book is packed full of a thousand mad and amusing ideas (clams as totem animals, stealing invisibility from a homeless person, Wild Turkey as spiritual prophylaxis, zombification through tanning, etc., etc.) that appear to be throw-away notions, but which are actually tied together by Zielinski’s milieu and end up painting a vibrant picture. Many of these ideas flow from Zielinski’s “synesthetic magic” system, and these ideas compose one of the more fun parts of the book for me. (Attention Gwenda: this book not only has a midget, it has a heroic undead hougan midget.)

It’s not a book that’s going to change the way you see the world, or the improve your understanding of yourself, or any of those things that Great Literature does for you, but it sure is a fun read.

Today I went looking for more information on the web and found that Zielinski has a blog. It’s relatively new, but there is already stuff there that is pretty damn funny, as well as things that are informative and a little touching.