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A snarky, irreverent tale of secret magic in the modern world, the first solo standalone novel in two decades from Steven Brust, the New York Times bestselling author of the Vlad Taltos series
Donovan was shot by a cop. For jaywalking, supposedly. Actually, for arguing with a cop while black. Four of the nine shots were lethal—or would have been, if their target had been anybody else. The Foundation picked him up, brought him back, and trained him further. “Lethal” turns out to be a relative term when magic is involved.
When Marci was fifteen, she levitated a paperweight and threw it at a guy she didn’t like. The Foundation scooped her up for training too.
“Hippie chick” Susan got well into her Foundation training before they told her about the magic, but she’s as powerful as Donovan and Marci now.
They can teleport themselves thousands of miles, conjure shields that will stop bullets, and read information from the remnants of spells cast by others days before.
They all work for the secretive Foundation…for minimum wage.
Which is okay, because the Foundation are the good guys. Aren’t they?
I’ve had people enthuse to me about Steven Brust more than once, but his main series is large and sprawling and not exactly my thing, and I’ve never found a point of entry to his work. When I saw this on Netgalley, a new series starter in a new genre for Brust, I thought I’d give it a try and see if he was actually as good as I’d heard.
He is. Not only is this written with assurance and strong craft, not only does it have highly entertaining banter among the diverse, distinct, and non-generic characters, but it also pulls off the difficult feat of having both moral complexity and a clear moral stance. The characters are imperfect and troubled, the reality they’re dealing with is imperfect and complicated, and ultimately there isn’t a “side” that is unambiguously and definitely the “good guys”; and yet most of the key characters, in their different ways, are striving to be “good guys” in their own terms, and some are even succeeding. It’s noblebright, not grimdark, but it’s noblebright with a lot of nuance and some extensive grey areas – yet ultimately hopeful.
I found the author’s choice to write first-person sections from the perspective of the antagonist, and mix them with omniscient narration about the protagonists, an interesting one. I’m not sure exactly what it does; perhaps its function is to humanise the antagonist, so that we can see how he, too, in his distorted way, thinks he’s a good guy, or at least a justified one.
The plot – agents of a secret cabal of sorcerers hunt down an assassin – is well paced, with good tension. Overall, excellent, and I would definitely read a sequel.
This book review is by Mike Reeves-McMillan and originally appeared on Goodreads.. Mike writes the Gryphon Clerks novels, a series featuring heroic civil servants and engineers doing their best in a difficult world; the Auckland Allies contemporary urban fantasy series, about underpowered magical practitioners stepping up to defend their city when nobody else will; and the Hand of the Trickster sword-and-sorcery series, in which a servant of the trickster god exalts the humble and humbles the exalted. His short stories have appeared in a number of professional and semiprofessional venues, including the Terry Pratchett tribute anthology In Memory.
