What is magic? I mean I know what magic is but in the
context of books it seems to me that it can be quite a broad spectrum. So
obviously you have books like Harry Potter, Poison Study and Wizards First
Rule, which are obviously magic, but then for me it all gets a little blurry and
questionable.
Even books which do clearly contain magic like Lord of the
Rings and Eragon leave me questioning whether they are ‘magic’ books, probably
because I view them as being primarily fantasy books, but are they also magic
books, for that matter is all fantasy magic?
Fantasy itself covers I wide range of books and styles so if
all fantasy is magic then magic covers a huge range, even fantasy that doesn’t
seem like it has magic like Game of Thrones has magical elements. And while on
the subject of magical elements what about things like Morganville, I mean the
house is... something… but is it magical, I mean it does stock up an empty
fridge with cokes, and even getting down to the basics of it, are Vampires
themselves magic? Is any book involving vampires or werewolves ‘magic’?
Once we’ve started questioning whether Vampires and
Werewolves are magic, where does that leave Gods? Are Gods magic? Because there
are things that happen in Percy Jackson that definitely fall under a
description of magical, but he is a demi god so is it still magic. And once you
question Gods then you have to question Angels and Demons; Hush, Hush definitely
has some magical elements but does the fact that they are Angels negate the
magic? The Demon Trappers series has all three, angels, demons and magic and
until this moment I’d never really stopped to think that the series includes
magic, I guess I was too preoccupied with the demons. (Although that’s not
saying much I forgot that poison study was about magic!)
And where do you stop after Vampires, Werewolves, God and
Angels and Demons? Shapeshifters? Ghosts? Elves? Dragons? Premonitions? The
Grim Reaper? Talking Lion’s and Fauns? At least we are certain that Witches,
Mages and Fairies are magic… right?
The other alternative for Vampires and Werewolves is
science. A lot of vampire books these days do make it sound more like science,
Morganville especially makes it more biology and physics based (although maybe
that’s all magic is in everything). Morganville does a good job of explaining
the magic off as science, the portals, the control over the borders of the
town, but even with all that Science just falls a little short of explaining it
all; I mean the house for starters has a mind of its own and responds to the
people inside, including saving both Michael and Clare, and throwing out
unwanted guests and again, it stocked the fridge; Then there is Ada who is kind
of science but at the same time, maybe not entirely and also the mental powers
of the vampires, not to mention the existence of vampires in the first place.
I can’t talk about whether it is science or magic without
bringing up the His Dark Materials trilogy Personally I always considered them
science, until I saw it on a list of magic books on Goodreads, the daemons, the
knife that can cut windows into different worlds, yup that all sounds pretty
much like magic, but at the same time when I read them it just didn’t feel like
magic to me.
Maybe the definition of whether something is magic is all up
to the way it’s perceived when read which could explain why I don’t like magic
yet love magic books, so long as the magic blends into the world of the book
and blurs the line between science and magic then I’m fine with it. What if the
characters in the books see magic, when it’s really science we know it’s
science but they don’t because it’s nothing they’ve ever seen before? I’m never
quite sure if the magic in White Wolf and The Swords of Night and Day is
supposed to be technology left over from a previous civilisation or if it
really is magic.
I suppose either is possible and ultimately like most things in books, a lot is
up the author but I think much more is up to the person reading it and how they
imagine the book and it’s world to be like, after all my Grandma refers to Google
as ‘my magic screen’ – to me it’s the internet easily explained as technology made
of 1’s and 0’s (yeah… I have no idea how it works), to her it’s ‘magic’ – maybe
magic is just what we call stuff that is so far beyond our understanding we can’t
even begin to work it out.
P.s. What about Sci-fi… could it be magic too...?
