2018 read #10: A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer.

A College of Magics by Caroline Stevermer
380 pages
Published 1994
Read from April 9 to April 18
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

A common motif you'll find in my reviews is my perennial search for "lost classics," by which I generally mean pretty good (or even great) fantasy and science fiction books from decades past, books that, for one reason or another, seem to have been forgotten. It has always baffled me how the likes of the Wheel of Time, or the Shannara series, or even the festering garbage pile of the Sword of Truth, could have become, and remained, so popular, becoming almost the default entry-point books for two generations of nerds, when they weren't even that good by the fantasy standards of their time. (Let alone by the standards of today, when fantasy and serious literature overlap so beautifully. Why on Earth would anyone read Wizard's First Rule in 2018? If someone makes a Best Fantasy Novels of All Time list and it isn't 50% books published after 2000, odds are it was written by some grognard who uses "social justice" as a pejorative. Or maybe they just don't like beautiful prose in their fantasy.)

The question of how certain IPs become popular while others languish has always fascinated me; it seems to be an intersection of what promotional effort publishers are willing to invest initially, and a certain tendency in pop culture to conflate bestsellerdom with merit. The default example of this is, of course, the Twilight/Fifty Shades cluster, but the fact that male nerds zero in on these instead of, say, Shannara demonstrates a certain level of misogyny... all of which is getting pretty far from whatever point I was trying to make.

The flipside of the popularity equation -- why certain books that are demonstrably better than the Jordans, Goodkinds, and Salvatores never become bestsellers and are ultimately lost to the pulp pile -- is closer to what I'm investigating here. I have a certain fondness for the underdog, and an admitted tendency toward "Oh, you hadn't heard of that one?" hipsterdom. Few book-reading experiences satisfy me as much as getting my hands on some forgotten fantasy novel from the 1980s or 1990s and discovering that it's pretty darn good. War for the Oaks is my default example, but I could also single out Wizard of the Pigeons, Sideshow, Pavane, Thomas the Rhymer, and really, anything at all by Ellen Kushner. (Where is my Swordspoint HBO series?)

Joining this august company is A College of Magics. Unlike Swordspoint and War for the Oaks, which you might find on internet best-of lists if you dig deep enough, I'd never even heard of College until I was browsing a local library and noticed the distinctive '90s Tor font on the spine. (Caroline Stevermer, on the other hand, has appeared in my reviews before; she co-wrote "The Vital Importance of the Superficial," one of my favorite stories in Queen Victoria's Book of Spells.) It is, for its first third or so, a tale of a magical finishing school, where young ladies from all over Europe are educated in deportment, classical literature, and the Balance of the Spheres in a coastal stronghold inspired by Mont Saint-Michel. There is a blond, aristocratic bully who uses her magic to torment the hero; a wise, intimidating, ultimately compassionate headmistress dressed in green robes; an adjoining town where the students sneak out for pastries; and banter exchanged among a core group of friends in a commonroom. Leaving aside the most obvious point of comparison, the only clue that College is NOT a young adult novel from the last ten years is the fact that every character in the book is white and straight.

Also dating the book: A scene in which our hero, held captive, is kissed against her will by a weaselly and manipulative resistance leader -- and decides that she "likes" the kiss, despite her own personal revulsion toward him. The '90s were a time when authors demonstrated their feminist bona fides with sex positivity at all costs; the importance of consent as a basic concept has only recently infiltrated fantasy fiction.

Our hero Faris speeds through her magical education at Greenlaw, covering three years in 126 pages. Which is a pity, as that section was thoroughly charming. What follows, according to a jacket blurb summary, is "a Grand Tour of an imaginary Europe," if a Grand Tour of an imaginary Europe consists of a Paris hotel room, a train ride, and political machinations in some vaguely sketched nation-states. The broader setting (outside of the lovely expanses of Greenlaw) is so hazily defined that it wasn't until the gang raced around Paris in a motorcar that I realized the setting was 1908, rather than the Regency period.

The political machinations were the weakest part of the story, I think. Fantasy politics requires investment in character, and Faris stands alone as the one semi-developed character in the book. Her unfailingly helpful companion Jane is fun, her bodyguard and inevitable love interest Tyrian is just another iteration of stoic competence; between the two of them, Faris never seems to be in real danger. Even her wicked uncle Brinker strains to make enough of an impression to become hateable. In some ways, it's not that hard to figure out why College appears on no best-of lists.

Nonetheless, despite all these flaws, I just can't help but be charmed by this book. Greenlaw ranks nearly equal to Hogwarts on the list of homey magical schools, and the magical wardens of the Earth were an interesting fantasy concept, rendered memorably. The climax, when Faris must undo the magical error of her grandmother, is a bit wobbly, yet has a taste of Studio Ghibli in its vivid imagery of lions and crystal stairways. This is a world I would love to see explored more thoroughly, and Faris was an agreeable companion for the brief Grand Tour we received.