Carol Berg

The Collegia Magica — (2010-2012) Publisher: For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic,sorcery’s decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination of life’s bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at Sabria’s last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship. But when the king of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled. As the king’s new agente confide, Portier — much to his dismay — is partnered with the popinjay Ilario de Sylvae, the laughingstock of Sabria’s court. Then the need to infiltrate a magical cabal leads Portier to Dante, a brooding, brilliant young sorcerer whose heretical ideas and penchant for violence threaten to expose theinvestigation before it’s begun. But in an ever-shifting landscape of murders, betrayals, old secrets, and unholy sorcery, the three agentes will be forced to test the boundaries of magic, nature, and the divine…

The Spirit Lens

Courtiers are figures of contempt and fun in most fiction. They are craven lickspittles and influence peddlers, usually without honor. In The Spirit Lens, Carol Berg gives us a hero who is a true courtier. He is diplomatic, disciplined, strategic and loyal to his king at all costs — and the costs are great.

The Spirit Lens is the first book in the Collegia Magica series. Portier de Savin-Duplais is the librarian at the Camarilla Magica. He is a failure. Despite his bloodline and all his studies, Portier cannot do magic. While this personal failure is deeply galling, it may not matter so much in the grand scheme of things, because Sabria, the kingdom that is Portier’s world, is changing, and magic is on the decline.

Portier is summoned by Philippe, the king and his distant cousin. There was an attempt on the King’s life. Philippe’s wife, Queen Eugenie, is the most likely suspect, but Philippe wants proof positive. Of course, the attack was magically driven. Of course, the Queen has two Mages from the college as part of her retinue. Of course, it was Eugenie who suggested that Philippe wrestle shortly before the attack, which required him to take off his personal armor. The attack happened on the anniversary of the death of Eugenie’s and Philippe’s infant son, and Philippe cannot bring himself to believe that Eugenie would use that date to attack him.

The King does not trust mages. He needs a student of magic who is not a practitioner, and someone who is loyal to him but not well known at court. Portier fits all the particulars. In spite of his fitness for the post, he was not the King’s first choice. The King’s closest friend and counselor, Michele de Vernase, investigated ten months ago, when the incident happened. He has not been heard from for many months. The King believes that the anniversary of his son’s death will be used again by this shadowy enemy. Portier has two months to solve this mystery.

To his chagrin, Portier is paired with Ilario, Eugenie’s illegitimate half-brother, who is touchingly loyal to the Queen. Ilario is bright, but he cares more about gaming and clothes than anything else. Berg writes, in Ilario, a great fop. To help with the magic, Portier also recruits a surly mage named Dante, who challenged the Camarilla curriculum and was awarded the title of Mage. He styles himself The Bloodless, a mocking reference to the fact that he is not sprung from one of the blooded, magical families, as is Portier. While The Camarilla’s magic seems to follow Newtonian rules, Dante’s view of magic is closer to quantum physics.

Blood, in The Spirit Lens, is vital to magic; not only the lineage of the magician, but the live-sustaining fluid itself. Part of Philippe’s distrust of magicians is the aftermath of the dreaded Blood Wars, which happened in recent history. Investigating, Portier soon discovers that magical students have been abducted and bled by an unknown sorcerer. This is an abomination, yet not so uncommon in the corridors of magic. Soon Portier himself is in danger, captured and viciously tortured by a masked adversary. Berg’s description of cupping and bleeding read as if she has done some research on these medieval practices.

Portier is intelligent, methodical and deliberate. He can be diplomatic, and much of his interrogation technique involves tricking information out of suspicious or unwilling subjects. The story moves rather slowly since is it a mystery, so Berg ratchets up the tension by providing a countdown clock. Each chapter shows the number of days remaining until the memorial of the prince’s death.

Portier is not perfect. His disappointment at his failure to do magic has left him with an unhealed wound, and more seriously, a huge blind spot. Dante tries to point out the obvious to him, but it is late in the book before Portier makes an important connection. It also helps that he finds out shocking information about himself, information that will clearly have ramifications in the second book.

This book, like many series books, does not end — it stops. The true adversary appears to have been identified, although not before he strikes a blow at the heart of Philippe’s kingdom. Portier is beginning to make use of the new information he has been given. He and Dante have parted ways, although Portier and Ilario are still friendly. Although they know now (maybe) who the villain is, they do not know where he is, or what his plans are.

This is a common sin among multi-book fantasies but it still irritates me. Another thing that irritates me about The Spirit Lens is the French connection. Berg designs both a magical system and a religious system (based on ancestor worship) that are internally consistent. The workaday world Portier inhabits, though, is a lot like fifteenth century Europe. Even the names suggest this, yet it’s not fifteenth century Europe. If this is a completely original world, Berg should have chosen less evocative names and fashions. This world felt stuck halfway between an original universe and an alternate-reality France, and this tugged me out of the story in spite of myself. For these reasons I am giving this book three and a half stars instead of four.

I will still search out The Soul Mirror, the second book. Portier is a sympathetic main character with integrity, honor and a sense of the absurd. I want to know what happens to him, his family and his friends. —Marion Deeds

The Soul Mirror

Carol Berg continues her Collegia Magica series with The Soul Mirror. The secret magical war being fought in the country of Sabria has left behind many victims: some dead, some maimed, some spiritually and psychologically damaged, and some intact in body and spirit but with reputation and honor destroyed. Anne de Vernase is one of these, the daughter of a traitor who not only betrayed country and king, but by betraying that king turned against his dearest and closest friend. Anne’s brother is held hostage by the king in an infamous prison known as the Spindle, and her strong, vibrant mother has catapulted into madness. Although Anne still lives on the estate she’s grown up on, it no longer belongs to the family, and a cordon of the king’s guards surrounds it at all times. Now Anne is informed that her younger sister Liannelle has died in a magical accident at the Camarilla, the magical college.

Before Anne can even begin to mourn or question her gifted sister’s death, her adversary, the King’s Prosecutor, Portier duPlais, arrives to demand her presence at court. Her home is about to be deeded to another family, and the king plans to marry her off. Anne feels anger close to hatred for Portier, even though, logically, she knows the case against her father was unassailable. The deepest part of Anne’s grief comes from the fact that her beloved father betrayed her as well.

At court, Anne finds herself reluctantly serving the queen. Queen Eugenie had also been accused of treason, but exonerated when Anne’s father was revealed as the magical traitor. Anne soon realizes that the plots against the queen have not ended, and at the center of them is the enigmatic, powerful and very dark mage Dante.

The book is told in first person from Anne’s point of view, and, as in The Spirit Lens, Berg creates a vivid, distinct voice. Anne, despite being beaten down by the events of the past four years, is intelligent and strong-willed. She realizes that her sister was trying to send her an important message before she died. Soon Anne is caught up, not only in the magical war that is happening in the capital city, Merona, but in endless court intrigues. Because of her name and her lineage, she has many enemies, but to her surprise she has allies as well. As Anne gathers information about her sister’s death, her father’s guilt begins to look less certain. But who can Anne trust?

This book explains some of the clues that were planted in the first book. Berg expands her explanation of the magical system, specifically the Blood Wars. We learn much more about the two magical families who were at the heart of that battle, the Gautiers and the Mondragons. Berg makes clear why raising the dead is considered an abomination, and why accomplishing it is so important for the Aspirant, as the shadowy figure behind the magical attacks is called.

Anne uses logic and intellect to solve the mysteries of the court, but she, who was always skeptical of magic, is forced to accept her sister’s power and the power of magic in general, for good or bad. She reluctantly comes to trust Portier and Eugenie’s foppish half-brother Ilario, who remains one of my favorites in this series.

It was a little too easy for me to figure out who the villain was, but Anne’s mysterious friend who speaks to her only mentally was a bit more of a surprise. I figured it out, but only shortly before the character did. More important than the” who” of this story (although that is vital) is the why, and the consequences of the magical actions. At the end of this book the risks go beyond an individual king and queen.

Berg creates a consequence of the Blood Wars that shows up in other fantasy novels, beginning with Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass. It’s the idea that the afterlife has somehow been tainted by actions of humans (in Berg’s case, human sorcerers.) Souls are trapped and unable to progress because of the actions of living men and women. This is an interesting theme. I wonder why we are interested in this, and what we think it means.

By giving this book a completely different narrator with a very different view of past events, Berg avoids Second-Book Slump, although some of the sequences in the queen’s chambers seem overly long. This is a solid entry in the series, a compelling read with heroic characters, interesting magic, and turns of events that challenge our preconceptions. I recommend it. —Marion Deeds