Magic has rules. You—and the characters in books—may not always know what those rules are, but rest assured that they’re there, and abiding by those rules can make a huge difference. Sometimes the stakes are as high as life or death, though not always. I think a lot of fantastical fiction involves the characters figuring out exactly what those rules are.
Today’s stack includes several stories involving magic!
Rialto by Kate Milford
Kate Milford is one of my favorite kids’ book authors, with several novels that aren’t all necessarily in a series but have interwoven worlds, threads that tangle into each other in wonderful ways. (You can read my Q&A with her here.) It’s been a few years since her last book, The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book, so I was very excited when I learned last year that she had another book coming this spring. Rialto is a standalone novel and doesn’t link to the other books as strongly, but it still has a similar sort of magic, and the sense of a history that stretches back a lot farther than just the story you’re currently reading.
Rialto Park was an old theme park in rural Missouri; it had a carousel filled with mythical creatures, a mysterious manor hidden in a hedge maze, and a skyway that took you up the mountain … and then back down again, because there wasn’t really anywhere to go at the top. But in the late 1980s, the park suddenly closed, and the neighboring town of Rialto—which basically existed because of the theme park—faded into obscurity, though it still survived.
Ivy and Dahlia Vicars are on a trip to Rialto: their mom is writing a book about theme parks, and it’s also an excuse to visit her best friend, “Aunt” Sally, who grew up in Rialto. Sally recently inherited a house from a relative, and is working through the bequests and various other details (along with her husband and her son, Remy). When the Vicars arrive in Rialto, they are surprised to find the town is in the middle of a forest, one that local legend says appeared overnight. And other strange things start to happen, too.
Remy is put in charge of delivering various bequests to folks around town, and when Ivy and Dahlia accompany him, they soon realize that there’s a lot more going on. It seems to be tied to the park’s closure, the mysterious forest, and some strange sightings of impossible animals. Together they work to put the clues together to figure out what really happened.
The cast of characters is, as always, filled with all sorts of colorful characters with unusual names and titles: Montague Kirkyard, ferryman; Kit Justiciar, Steward of the Court of Piepowders. (You’ll have to read the book to find out what those titles mean.) It’s also, as usual with Milford’s books, a story built on stories. There are old tales surrounding Rialto, stories that were represented by the various park attractions, and you do get to hear at least a few of them over the course of the book.
Rialto is also about the relationship between the two sisters. Dahlia, the younger sister, suffers from anxiety, and some of the book is about the ways that she copes with social pressures and learns to understand her body’s reactions to stress. Ivy, on the other hand, struggles with how to be a good big sister, but sometimes her strong desire to make everything okay is actually more stressful for Dahlia. Both of them have to figure out how to communicate what they need to the other and learn how to balance out their sometimes conflicting impulses. It’s a lovely book, and even though it’s magical and fantastical, it also has some real truths about emotions and grief, about resentment and forgiveness.
Aurora and the Orc by Lewis Trondheim (translated by Montana Kane)
My daughter had read this comic book before me, and when I asked her what she thought about it, she said she wasn’t so sure about it, that it was a little weird. Then I saw that it was by Lewis Trondheim, and I said, oh, yeah, he’s French. Sometimes Europeans have different approaches to what’s appropriate for kids, and if you’re not expecting it, it can be a bit off-putting.
In this case, it’s blood and gore in what appears to be a comic book for young kids. Aurora’s class gets a new kid, an orc who has huge teeth, pointy ears, and carries a big club. But nobody else seems to think anything of it, despite the fact that he keeps trying to eat the local pets and talks glibly about violence and war. Aurora is assigned to be his deskmate, and it’s up to her to teach her how human school functions, even as the orc talks about killing elves. The book is formatted a bit like comic strips—each page is usually a six-panel comic with a gag at the end, but it also has an overarching plotline.
One of the weird bits of magic is that when the orc walks through a doorway, he is sometimes transported back into his own realm—more specifically, into the elven castle, where he proceeds to smash elves (this is where that gore comes in) until he goes through another doorway, at which point he pops back into Aurora’s world at the exact moment he left … but covered in blood. This, too, is a bit of a mystery to solve: what causes this to happen? And we also get hints of what’s happening in the other world—the elves talk about Elfendur, a legendary orc-slaying hero who mysteriously vanished.
I liked the overall plotline, particularly when you gradually start to see how the various pieces fit together, but I could see why my daughter was a little weirded out by the amount of death and violence in a kids’ book.
The Bizarre Bazaar: Mirror Town written by Daniel Nayeri, illustrated by Liz Enright
The Bizarre Bazaar: Down a Dark Path written by Daniel Nayeri, illustrated by Lesley Vamos
Here’s a two-for-one! The Bizarre Bazaar is a comic book series about strange tales, with a framing story about a magical shop. The Bizarre Bazaar is where all the magical items from stories eventually end up—you know, wardrobes with portals to other realms, that sort of thing. Each of the books tells the story of an item in the shop. There’s a framing story with the two shopkeepers, the extremely mischievous Babs who does most of the talking, and stern Bruno who seems to be trying not to react to her antics. They appear to be trapped there—the store is actually their prison—but mostly they set up the story you’re about to read.
These are the first two books. Mirror Town is about a kid, Abel Azari, and a mirror that he finds—and then falls through. The world on the other side seems so much better. His parents are attentive, the girl he’s crushing on wants to hang out … Yeah, you know the drill. Parallel worlds where everything seems better are always concealing deep, dark secrets, right? But everyone’s gotta learn that for themselves.
Down a Dark Path is about two kids, Lucy and Frida, who live on their family farm. It’s summertime, and they’re making jam for the family business. They’ve never been allowed to visit the town where Dad goes to sell the jam, and both parents act really weird whenever they ask about it, telling them nothing except that it’s a dangerous world out there. But now it seems there’s a danger nearby: uprooted trees, a scratching at the window, and other signs of something sinister. Lucy is convinced there’s a vampire on the loose, but can she prove it?
These stories aren’t too scary, but they have that bit of creepiness to them that reminds me of telling spooky stories around the campfire. I remember hearing some urban legends for the first time around middle school or so, things like the ghost hitchhiker, and these have a similar quality to them. The commentary from Babs and Bruno tends to cushion it a little, since it reminds you that they’re telling a story (and you already know you probably can’t trust Babs). One final note: each book ends with a “Next time in The Bizarre Bazaar” bit, though these aren’t really what happens in the next book; they’re just funny gags that hint at other strange tales.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 8: A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman
Okay, if you haven’t already heard of Dungeon Crawler Carl, this is definitely not the place to start! (Try here instead.) Carl and Princess Donut (the cat) are still descending through the dungeon, trying to make their way out without losing too many of their friends or their own humanity (or … catity?). What I said about magic and rules in the intro certainly applies here—the DCC books are full of rules about how each floor of the dungeon works, plus rules for all of the spells and abilities and equipment that the crawlers have access to.
(Strictly speaking, I don’t know if this is considered “magic” because on some level it’s alien technology, simulating a magical dungeon where the players can cast spells and drink potions. But, you know, sufficiently advanced technology and all that—for most intents and purposes, this is magic.)
This is the way the LitRPG genre works—you don’t just get the storyline, but you also get a peek behind the curtain at the gears and levers that make the thing work. Well, in theory. Each floor of the dungeon has been its own game with its own rules, which Dinniman generally spells out in a lot of detail, and every time a character gets a new item or levels up, we usually find out how those things work, too. We know Carl’s level as well as the level of several of his abilities. And then we get to read about how Carl figures out a way to use all those rules to cause utter chaos.
If this were a real game, Carl would be a griefer. You know: players who are technically following the rules, but have figured out the weird glitches and technicalities that let them break the game. Griefers are a game designer’s nightmare; how do you set things up so that people will play the game as designed and not ruin the experience for everyone else? And, of course, playing games with a griefer is not fun at all. But since the dungeon is being run by terrible people who are exploiting both crawlers and NPCs for entertainment, watching Carl turn the rules against them is one of the big delights of the books. I think that may be why we get so many details about the rules—because in order for you to understand how clever Carl’s exploits are, you have to know how the system was designed to work first.
A Parade of Horribles actually covers two dungeon floors this time, levels 10 and 11. Level 10, which takes up the bulk of the book, is a race: the crawlers each receive either a vehicle or a mount, and are divided up into heats and then sent to a series of seven races, each with its own setting and weird set of rules. The last team to cross the finish line in each heat is eliminated from the dungeon, which leads to a lot of battling between the crawlers (and the NPC racers), and also forces Carl to think about how to save more crawlers before they get into the later heats and are forced to face each other. Level 11 is hinted at throughout the first part of the book—it’s a parade, it’s an arena, it’s a bit of a mystery what’s going to happen there.
While I enjoyed the story as usual, it did seem that this volume had more than the usual amount of info dumping. By this point in the story, there are so many characters to keep track of, so many little rules that were introduced along the way. And that’s not even getting into what’s happening in the world outside the dungeon, where the showrunners have quickly been realizing that the dungeon’s AI has become dangerously powerful. Book 8 does finally give us some answers to what’s happening (plus the mysterious Pineapple Cabaret, the subject of the extra short stories at the end of each book, finally gets tied into the main plotline). But the cost of cramming all that info (and two floors!) into a single book meant that there were times where I did feel like I was reading a game rulebook rather than a novel.
Still, if you’re this far into DCC then you’re along the ride, and this volume is certainly an explosive one with a spectacular finish. And, of course, the stakes are just going to keep going up from here.
My Current Stack
I just started reading The Franchise by Thomas Elrod, which is about a massive fantasy series that gets brought to life on the big screen. That’s about all I know so far: the first two chapters have given me both a glimpse of the initial publication of the story and a bit of the story itself, so I’m curious to see where it goes. I also have some more AI-related books, so I’m sure I’ll have another stack of that theme in another month or so!
Disclosure: I received review copies of these titles. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support independent booksellers and my writing!
