Outlaw Mage - K.S. Villoso

Outlaw Mage is the start of a new series for Villoso, whose Annals of the Bitch Queen series was a delightful, bloody, character-driven read that dovetailed complex human relationships with a desire to explore the ideas and issues that make people, well, people. And, you know, also stab people a lot. On balance, I think this new book has similar strengths; the character work is top-notch, the world-building is at once intricate and organic, so it never feels like you're being infodumped, and the story certainly kept me turning pages long after I should've been in bed. There are, I think, fewer stabbings. On the other hand, there's quite a few messy magical demises in there, so it probably balances out. So that's the capsule review. Magic, cynical, smart protagonist who is slightly too jaded for her own good, an immigrant story, a family story, a story of expectations and reality, a story of fighting against a system from inside and outside it, a story with more than a few explosions. It's a great time, and you should read it. 

Now, a little more in depth stuff. Full disclosure, I backed this one on Kickstarter, so I was primed to enjoy it, given Villoso's record. And, well, I did. So lets talk a bit about why.

First, I like Rosha. The protagonist of the book, she's a woman with talent. Magical talent to be precise. The sort of talent that lets you teleport around the place, or turn your enemies inside out. She's fiercely intelligent, and deeply uncompromising. She is also, at least in my view, someone who has a lot of wards up against a system that is designed to hurt her. She struggles, sometimes, to relate to people. In many ways, she wants to be left alone. But oh, is she proud. A woman who knows she's the best in her class, at the pre-eminent magical academy. Surrounded by sycophants, try-hards and political scions, all of whom will end up better positioned than she does, because of where she came from. Because Rosha is from a little-loved late-acquired portion of a fantasy Empire, a place nobody thinks about much, a place where the people are othered, not worth the time of those folks who go to, say, elite magic schools. But Rosha is definat and competent and knows what she's about.  I love that for her, about her. And seeing her struggle, to try and make something of herself out of the expectations other s have set for her, and that she set for herself, that's a joy, too.; As is the life and energy and passion you can see in her when she's talking about her family, with her family. As an aside, it's lovely to just see a family like this. They're a sprawling net of squabbling, loving, hurtful, silly, murderous, wonderful people, and honestly I'd go to dinner with all of them. The dynamics there are perfect, the prodigal daughter with one foot out the door and one foot teetering over the edge of the frame, one way or the other, trying to find acceptance and herself in equal measure. Honestly, I'm doing Rosha a disservice, because there'#s so much going on beneath the surface of her story, as the book slowly unpacks he rmotivations, her past, and that of those around her. But I'm struggling to convey to you what a complex, thoughtful, fiercely angry, even more fiercely talented protagonist she is, how shaped by her past, and how huiman she is because of that, and the pain and love that those experiences encapsulate.

Also, she is, I must confess, sometimes a bit of an acid-tongued take-no-shit kind of person, and I do appreciate that.

Then there's the world. This is a world with, I'm not going to say problems, but problems. It's a world whose story is, at least currently, centred on an Empire with a capital E. An expansionist, hungry Empire. One that considers itself to be the centre of everything, that reaches out to the people and cultures around it on a self-imposed mission to civilise. Well, in between mining and logging and, you know, resource extraction from those Other places. Villoso builds up the splendor and decay of that empire wonderfully. From institutions riven through with factional infighting, to functionaries trying to get on top of things, but still trapped by their entrenched cultural biases, to a visceral, virulent, quietly hideous disdain for those who come in from the outside, couched in a language of grudging, back-handed acceptance. This is imperialism writ large, and small, a pervasive influence that you can feel coming off the page and seeping into your bones. Then there's the distant wilds, the places where an airship run by magic rolls by once a month or so, and everyone is out on the edges of what is called civilisation, trying to make a life for themselves and stay out of the way of everything that abides in liminal spaces, as well as the ever approaching boots of the local Authority. And as you're washing through the clear streams and rude log cabins and neighbours with a pie on the window sill and just a little casual racism in their heart of hearts, you're off to the towering ivory spires of an elite institution, which happens to train people to use magic, while also helping them learn how to run an empire. As long as they don't forget their place, their constraints, the system that put them there and could remove them if it felt the impersonal need to do so - or a personal one, come to that. The empire is a facade of institutions wrapped around power and wealth and a set of lies it tries to tell itself in the dark of night about who it is, and, wow does that all feel very familiar to me in terms of lived experience. This is how things used to be, not that long ago, out here off the page - and you can feel the same energy here, building a world that's rich and exploitative and violent in the abstract and the practical, even as it manages to be the biggest, nearly the only game in town. This is a world that feels real, and Villoso is unafraid to explore what that means.

The story...well, I don't want to spoil it, honestly. Because there's moment sin there that made me laugh out loud. And twists that made me blink, and mentally rearrange my idea of what was going on. And quiet moments of honesty and intimacy and pain that come off the page at you like knives and kisses in a roll of words. Suffice to say, it's a story that has a lot to say, and tells itself well. You should read it, because it's one of the best things I've read this year, and I want everyone else to get the chance to feel how this made me feel. Do it.