An interestingly crafted world and characters with resonances to today
It is said (well, I have said and paraphrased others) that science fiction doesn’t predict the future, or even reflect a future so much as it talks about today and what is happening today. Secondary World Fantasy has often been very different, and more conservatively looking backward on a past that never really was, more than anything else. You “can’t get there from here in fantasy;” it’s not showing an aspirational place, or usually even our own world as it exists now. Urban or Contemporary Fantasy is one thing, and that is often very topical and political, but secondary world fantasy, not so much.
I feel like that paradigm is being confronted, lately, when it comes to fantasy. Is this due to the decline of science fiction versus fantasy (at least from an anecdotal observation)?¹The Outcast Mage by Annabel Campbell is stepping up to the plate to challenge that paradigm along the way of telling its absorbing story, with interesting characters and immersive worldbuilding. It’s a secondary world fantasy, not even science fantasy, that boldly leverages real-world and contemporary politics today. Let’s dig in.
We have several main characters that the novel revolves around. Our primary POV character is Naila. Naila is a student at a magical academy in the city of Amoria, a city of glass and magic where magicians are dominant and those without magic are second-class citizens. Naila tested as having magical ability, but frustratingly, she has shown absolutely no ability to control her magic, and she can’t leave the academy until she does. She’s a grain in the sand in the oyster of the academy, irritating the establishment all around her. She is the titular Outcast Mage, a magician who can’t even do a single spell. She’s Rincewind, but played straight and to more serious effect.
Naila’s life changes when she runs into Haelius. Haelius is not only a magician, but a wizard, a powerful, idiosyncratic one, whose raw power is unquestionable and his eccentricity undeniable. On paper, he’s one of the most powerful people in the city, if not the world. But he is interestingly complex and sometimes fragile as well.
Their meeting and their efforts to help each other, Haelius very curious about Naila’s untapped talent, and Naila frustrated at being caught between two worlds, would make a pretty solid if not particularly noteworthy fantasy novel. Haelius is a few years older than Naila, but this is not the kind of book that is a romance, or a romance in the making, although the bond that the two develop is a strong and interesting one. Haelius tries to unravel Naila’s true nature, and finds that it is stranger and odder than even he, a premier wizard in Amoria, can possibly guess.
But that’s not all that is going on here, and this is where we start to get into that paradigm challenge. Another POV character is Larinne. Larinne is Consul of Commerce (Amoria is something of a republic, at least at the start). She does have her hands full helping manage trade, but she soon gets into the attention of Oriven, and here is where the novel starts to look at things from a contemporary angle. Oriven is a nakedly ambitious politician who uses the power of demagoguery to sow fear, dissension, anger and intolerance, particularly toward foreigners, and also the residents of the part of the city called the Southern Quarter, reserved, almost like a ghetto, for those that do not have magic. While a Senator with tyrannical ambitions certainly can invoke, say, Star Wars, the rousing of intolerance in the public, and the reactions to it are very much a lens to the rightward yanking of governments in many countries. Oriven’s rhetoric that Amoria is in decline and that people must act, quite frankly, could be rewritten as “Make Amoria Great Again” without missing a beat.
And as the novel goes on, and Oriven’s power grows, the climate of fear and the power that he gathers and wields does feel unnervingly like it is set in the modern day. Like in Samantha Mills’s The Wings Upon Her Back, a science fantasy novel I reviewed in 2024, Oriven’s authoritarianism and efforts at social control are very pointedly resonant with the current state of affairs in a number of countries around the world.
And the political is personal, as Naila comes from non-magical parentage. So her visits to her family in the Southern Quarter become more and more fraught as Oriven’s campaign continues. Campbell does a great job in showing that these systems of control and manipulation, stoking hatred and fear, ultimately hurt people and put strain on their relationships with those they love and trust the most.
On the theme of foreigners and what is directed toward them, another POV character, Entonin, shows us the hazards of that, and the fruit of Oriven’s campaign as well. He is a priest who has come to the city on ostensibly a diplomatic mission. Oriven and his efforts, though, not only blunt Entonin’s efforts, but manage to poison the well and portray his work as an attempt to undermine the city and set up a war. Again, this feels really relevant and important in a world where countries are being poisonous to longstanding allies and ruining once friendly or neutral relationships, stoking the fires of hatred and violence.
Let it be said that, for all the political relevance that is the heart of this piece, and my perspective on it, the novel does have what you’d expect in a rich and interesting fantasy. There’s interesting theories on how magic works (and what is exactly going on with Naila). The city of Amoria itself, underneath its glass dome, in the desert, in a normally inhospitable place, is a wonder of worldbuilding and rich immersion into a fantasy landscape as one could hope for. It reminds me somewhat of Ninavel, a mage-ruled city in a desert in Courtney Schafer’s Shattered Sigil series. Ninavel was far less organized as a polity than Amoria; Amoria may be a republic falling to a demagogue tyrant, but it is a functional polity in a way that Ninavel, ruled by gangs and mages in cutthroat competition, is not. But the vision of a city using magic in an inhospitable place is a good one, especially when the fragility of longtime systems is shown, as well as how they threaten the city when undermined. That, too, is part of the political water of the book.
So one final note on that worldbuilding. For all that is turning into a totalitarian autocracy under Oriven’s ambition, I do want to give Campbell credit for escaping the too often retrograde feudal or monarchical systems of government that many secondary worlds rely upon. While we don’t get any points of view into that government other than Larinne, as above, there is enough shadowplay to feel how Amoria should work and act when not under stress, and that is NOT with a King/Queen and a court. Republics and systems with representation are worthwhile to explore in fantasy, and once again, the book shows what happens when such systems are turned to evil ends.²
With some stunning revelations at the end, the book doesn’t quite end on anything like an potential offramp. I do look forward to more in the series, and I hope Campbell continues to explore this contemporarily resonant space she is engaging in with her world and characters. Secondary world fantasy CAN talk about the contemporary world in an engaging and relevant way, and I hope the author continues to do so.
Highlights:
- Relevant to contemporary politics in a fresh and interesting way
- Strong set of characters with engaging stories and connections
- Immersive and rich worldbuilding
Reference: Campbell, Annabel. The Outcast Mage [Orbit, 2025].
¹ Outside of the scope of this piece, but just looking at what books publicists try to sell me on, and the books in catalogs and the like I am exposed to, Fantasy is Queen. Not even just Romantasy, the new Hierophant of Fantasy’s Court. I think it’s been like that for a long time, perhaps even during the entirety of my fan writing life, but it feels even more lately that science fiction is increasingly a smaller portion of the SFF landscape. Thus, fantasy has an opportunity to pick up some of that slack. Science fantasy as well; see later on when I mention Samantha Mills.
² So, if fantasy is going to pick up the slack (see note ¹), it’s going to have to give up the monarchy as the paradigm of government. Even autocracies, soft and hard, in the modern day really aren’t monarchies. So am I calling for fantasy writers to expand their horizons? Well, yes.
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
