A myth about understanding why we love myths—a metamyth, if you will
Fantasy is a genre built on myth. That is what J. R. R. Tolkien was quite explicitly doing with The Lord of the Rings, and in traditional Western fantasy the myths of Western Europe are reinterpreted in any number of ways. In non-Western fantastic literature, the same is done to the mythologies of a variety of other cultures. Here, that concern is made more explicit than most fantasy, of any tradition, in Simon Green’s novella For Love of Magic.
For Love of Magic starts off with what appears to be a fairly standard urban fantasy setup: a magical painting has begun to cause problems in a museum in London, and His Majesty’s government calls in the freelance magic hunter to solve the problem. This opening scene alone is inventive, if not the most original, by virtue of it involving our esteemed magic hunter literally walking into the painting and forcing what’s on the other end into a shape that is more amenable to the non-magical world.
But that is only the opening salvo of a barrage of interesting magical set-pieces. Our protagonist is rapidly sucked into a war that has lasted for eons, between those who want to see magic gone and those who want a better coexistence between the magical and the mundane. This war has suddenly escalated: the opponents of magic have now found a way to travel through time, trying to erase that which made magic meaningful—to erase myth, to erase heroism and whimsy. Our protagonists simply cannot allow that.
It is here that For Love of Magic begins to really shine, as it sets out to interrogate the meaning of myth. That is why you find yourself sent back in time to Roman Britain, where you meet Boudica, as well as King Arthur and Robin Hood, among other figures of British mythology, not quite as you remember them, because time has done a number on how we perceive them. These were men and women, all too human, as Green stresses, who have become something else as time marched inexorably on, becoming the heroes, myths, and legends of British culture, and those of its former colonies.
Green is willing to show heroism become a burden, not so much literally as metaphorically through the incursions of the time travelers. These are people who have become special in a time when their Lord-knows-how-many generations of their descendants have passed on, with their own long lines of descendants likewise. They have become pawns in a war far more literal than what we call ‘culture wars,’ a conflict that truly deserves that title over the role of magic in human society. They are burdened with the vicious arguments of their progeny, but unlike the cold and silent statues of our day, be they in Bristol or Charlottesville, these heroes get to speak back and fight back.
The action in this slim little volume is well depicted, never bogged down in the minutiae that can tank a good action sequence. Green’s writing is brisk when it needs to be in these dynamic scenes, and tender when it needs to be among some of the character moments, be they concerned with romance or with the gravity of the situation. It is a style, indeed a combination, that feels properly heroic, with the gravitas that such a story naturally needs. Green never lets the story feel puny.
If anything, I’m disappointed this book wasn’t longer. There are many more British legends he could have gone with. The last one he depicts, while written by a British author (although not within Britain), struck me as a very odd choice for this sort of book, and some of the setting of that story is brought to Britain in a way that feels odd. Indeed, it’s a format that could have made for a much longer book, and part of me really wants to read that book (I can think of at least one British literary legend in the public domain that wasn’t in it, and frankly I was surprised that this figure was omitted). I don’t know whether Green is planning any sequels, but he really should be, for there are so many directions this story could go. There are other British myths, but also myths of other countries (his Wikipedia page mentions he studied American literature in university, in addition to British literature). Indeed, I daresay this novel could set up a whole shared universe like that of the late Eric Flint’s 1632 series.
For Love of Magic is a book that is not particularly original in a number of elements, but makes up for all of that in its bold use of intertextuality and its investment in understanding why its audience reads stories like this. It is fantasy that doesn’t just crib from mythology, but engages with and even probes these stories for why they became myths. It is a fantasy that is in many ways more self-aware than its contemporaries, and is all the better for it. Now only if Green could write another one…
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.
POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.
Reference: Green, Simon. For Love of Magic [Baen, 2023].
