Review (sample): O.J. Lewis, Legend of the White Magician
O. J. Lewis’s Legend of the White Magician carries the following blurb (from Amazon):
ALL MEN ARE EQUAL. Yes!!! But for which price?
Set in an alternate history, Legend of the White Magician imagines a Russian Civil War fought as much with magic as a black powder.
Russia is in flames from the east to the west. The nobles, once proud and arrogant, are now fighting for their very existence against the Republican Army and their force of workers fighting for their freedom.
Though the black magician Tsar Alexander II lies dead, the Russian Imperial Army continues to fight to the last man under the command of cruel General Voronin - a soldier bent on securing victory for the old order by any means necessary.
With the Imperial Army cornered, Ivan Oblomov, the commander of the republic army, needs one last victory to bring peace. But little does he know that behind the stronghold’s walls an old, dark power is rising. One that will change the tide of the war and usher in a new dark age of blood for Russian.
Legend of the White Magician is a bold, daring alternate history novel for fans of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, Harry Turtledove and Susanna Clarke.
Having only read the free sample—a prologue and two chapters—I can’t say a whole lot about the plot or development of this novel. Apparently some reviewers have found the battle tactics and strategy exceptional, which suggests to me that the book is headed toward a kind of military fantasy mode, as suggested also by the author’s comparison to the work of Harry Turtledove (Guns of the South, etc.).
Clearly this is an ambitious novel, set in an alternate Russian history somewhere in the steam age, albeit some sort of television-like system (technology? magic? is there a difference here?) has recently been introduced. The rough setup is that the revolutionary Republican forces, under the command of Commander Ivan Oblomov, are on the verge of defeating the last remnants of the cruel, oppressive Imperial regime. The battles have apparently been fought through a combination of magic and more traditional means, but now there are almost no magicians left on either side. Unfortunately, the Imperials appear to have some sort of new magical approach, something horrible and demonic. (I think I spotted a hint that it involves werewolves, but that’s just a guess.)
Our protagonist—or perhaps only one of them—is Andrei Alamov, a white magician. At some time in the past, Andrei fought and defeated the black magician Alexander II. These days, people generally talk as though Andrei can do anything, win any battle, but in fact he knows just how narrowly he defeated the Tsar. And with all sorts of worrying hints and indications of nastiness afoot in the Imperial camp, it seems clear that Andrei will be tested to his limits.
I confess that I found the prose style clunky: a lot of simple declarative sentences thudding along, not a lot of rich description or subtle character-building. To be fair, I think the author is trying to replicate a particular Russian prose style, so it may be deliberate; I’m certainly not competent to judge Russian prose or its emulation. And it must be said that some readers will mostly want a fast-paced story with lots of twists and turns, something the author’s description and a moderately lengthy reader review on Amazon suggest is central to the work. I can’t really comment, because the free sample is almost entirely setup, with a lot of indirect exposition presumably intended to establish the situation quickly. I can say that the quoted description above gives a passably representative sample, so you can decide for yourself.
At a guess, I’d say this book is probably very heavy on plot, perhaps especially a lot of military bits and pieces. I suspect that the magic system will be fairly sharply drawn, with definite rules and power limits, and that Lewis will be spending a lot of time exploring how magic functions in warfare. Conversely, I doubt that there is a great deal of character development: people speak more or less directly, often in lengthy speeches, and kind of “lay it out there,” as it were. Not to my taste, especially, but I do know readers for whom indirection, subtle characterization, and fine-detail everyday description are irritating distractions from the “meat” of a book.
If you do read The Legend of the White Magician, please leave me comments and let me know how my guesses panned out.