Carol Berg

The Collegia Magica — (2010- ) 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 the investigation 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

It turned out that my husband, Gert, and I ended up reading The Spirit Lens by Carol Berg at roughly the same time. As it’s the first book in her newest series, the COLLEGIA MAGICA, we were both pretty excited (both of us being pretty big Berg fans). As we read, we ended up discussing The Spirit Lens a lot, and I found it easier to express my thoughts while discussing them. Therefore, Gert agreed to help me write a conversational review for the book. Aside from format, it’s not really any different from any other review.

Beth: Let’s start with the positive.

Gert: All right. Well, good things: First off, her characterization of everyone but Maura and Portier, I'd say. They feel solid and real, and are interesting to read about.

Beth: The secondary characters are definitely one of The Spirit Lens’ strong points. There was a lot of variety in them, I noticed. A lot of different personalities. And a lot of personality, period. Even the ones who weren't "on screen" very much left a pretty strong impression.

Gert: Absolutely. Villains, heroes and people caught in the middle, everyone was pretty well characterized. As well, the setup of the world itself is actually pretty good — science and magic on a collision course. It could perhaps have been shown better, but it was there enough, for me at least, that it felt like a good basis.

Beth: I thought it was an interesting premise, though it didn't come through strongly enough for me. I felt like it could have been a very fascinating society, but I just didn't see enough of it.

Gert: A definite point, that. One problem was that Carol Berg didn’t truly show how the magic was losing people's faith in it. I mean, several clearly magical effects were performed, but not much of the fakery and smoke and mirrors was shown.

Beth: Exactly. There's a lot of talk about magic being mostly trickery, but then said trickery is practically never shown. That made it difficult for me to understand what was so different about Dante's magic and why it convinced Portier so strongly. But then, I didn't have a very good idea of how the magic system worked, even by the end of The Spirit Lens.

Gert: No, it's not shown all that clearly. I got an inkling of it, from descriptions of spells being worked, and it's apparently this intricate placement of 'particles' of various 'elements', and requires a particular genetically inherited trait to work at all. Dante, meanwhile, goes about it wholly another way — but not one that, when it's first demonstrated, feels different.

Beth: I think that ties in to my initial problem with the Prelude of The Spirit Lens. Not very many things are explained as well as they needed to be, and I was left with the strong feeling that somehow I'd made a mistake and picked up the second book, rather than the first. And I never really shook that feeling. I never quite got over the confusion that the Prelude left me with.

Gert: I agree. The Prelude definitely felt like it was the second book, rather than the first. So did a number of other elements, as well. Berg apparently did take the second book and make it first in the series, which strikes me as maybe not the best decision. A lot of the problems with The Spirit Lens seem to come from that.

Beth: Yeah. The weird thing was, I'd forgotten that, about her making the second book into the first book. I learned that a while back and then promptly misplaced it somewhere in the back of my mind. I was perfectly confident in her ability to make it work. But in the end it didn't work. I had too many questions and the book required me to make too many leaps without a lot of information to do it. And I still feel a little stupid. Like, why was this so hard for me to get? I don't usually have this problem.

Gert: I had an easier time leaping to the required conclusions, it seems, but then, I'm more used to science fiction, where something like that is required. A lot of science fiction tends to just drop a one-off remark about something and then expect you to extrapolate from that — sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. It is too close to the not-working side in The Spirit Lens for my tastes.

Beth: I think though I could've at least dealt with that, but there were other problems. Like the prose. What on earth happened there? I'm still wondering if it's just me. Like, has the Carol Berg Wire in my brain gone wonky or something? Because that did not seem much like her prose. It felt clunky, repetitive in areas, and whoa nelly, the action scenes. I'm sorry, but the action scenes were just a hot mess.

Gert: In her previous work, I never felt confused at events even when things were moving really fast. Here, though, I did. I found myself thinking things like "Where did he come from? And his leg, how did that get there?" way too often.

Beth: Yeah. Remember, in Aladdin, when the Genie sprouted a bunch of arms and pointed in every different direction? That's how the action scenes felt to me. But it wasn't just that. Something just... felt off. And you know, it highlighted some things that seem kind of small and nitpicky. Like her use of "illumined" all the time drove me nuts. It seems like such a small thing to be irritated by, but she used "illumined" every. Single. Time. And a lot of things got illumined. It happened a lot. You mean she couldn't have come up with another way to put it? "Illumine" is one of those words like "ostentatious." You need to be careful how much you use it. (Okay, I lie. She used “illuminated” once, which should not be something that stands out but it was the only time.)

Gert: Yeah, there were definite issues with the prose, I noticed that myself. It almost seems like Berg didn't write it herself, or something — or maybe a pod person took her over. Her prose in her previous work has always been utterly superb, so what happened?

Beth: Not a clue. I'm still baffled. I was so excited to get my hands on the book, so it's mindboggling to me. I mean, I had to keep putting it down and coming back to it later. Even the first time I read Flesh and Spirit, when I found it really slow, I never put it down. I never put down The Soul Weaver, either. I don't know. I guess both Valen and Gerick were infinitely more interesting and palatable than Portier.

Gert: I'd agree with you. And character-wise, Portier is truly a weak, weak spot of this book. He's dreary at best, and annoying at worst. I found myself wishing Ilario was the main character most of the time.

Beth: In the Prelude I just found him annoying. He reminded me of you when you get up on your academic high horse. But afterward... he's inconsistent. Mostly I don't find him interesting, but I don't find him at all sympathetic, either. He bullies frightened children into spilling secrets, then mentally gloats about how clever his interrogation methods are, then bemoans the fact that he's too soft-hearted. He didn't seem at all soft-hearted to me. And his complaints about people viewing him as someone clinging to his royal cousin for better fortune... those grated. I mean, that is what he was doing, essentially. He doesn't want magic for any reason other than some very childish dreams of being a hero, as well.

Gert: Quite. He's a really unsympathetic character in a lot of ways, and yes, he does remind me of myself at my very worst. In fact, he reminds me of me 10 to 12 years ago, full of myself and thinking I had all the answers to everything. And his one bit of humility (that he failed as a sorcerer) is mostly used to whine. Hopefully, he will improve over the series — in fact he shows a small spark of this near the end of The Spirit Lens. However, some other events there grated very, very hard. He seems like what roleplayers call the “GMPC” — game master's player character. The author's favorite, I suppose you could call it.

Beth: Yeah, I thought so too. I mean, why on earth did Phillipe have him heading the investigation? Portier is naive and sheltered. He had barely been out of his library for what, nine years? And he makes some really stupid mistakes because of it and suffers very little consequence over all. And his "relationship" with Maura! Ugh!

Gert: Absolutely. He seems simply like the wrong man for the job, relation or no. The only reasoning I can see for the king to pick him is that he is a failed sorcerer, and thus has publicly admitted to having no magic, and also a relation of his. That seems very thin, when you also consider that he, while smart, is about as streetwise as a hole in the ground.

Beth: And perhaps not the best judge of people, either. I mean, we rode along with Portier while the important stuff took place elsewhere. Like Dante's temper threatening to expose the investigation. When precisely did that happen? And if Gaetana is so gosh darn rotten, couldn't we have seen some more of that? We barely encounter her in the book at all; the bulk of what we get is hearsay.

Gert: Yeah, a good few things of note happened off screen, and were then retold.

Beth: And what was up at the end there? I suffered a lot of "What the hell?" moments. Not just the whole thing with Maura, though that was confusing too ("I'm not in love with her, I've just spent the entire book mooning over her, is all!"). So many things just came completely out of left field.

Gert: Quite. The Big Reveal of who the villain was didn't feel as shocking as it could have either, for a number of reasons. And well, the whole thing with the final assassination attempt — it ended up feeling like a cop-out.

Beth: Yeah, I guess we weren't the only ones considering a wall-banger, at the end there. But you know, I've also thought that at least some of the problem with the prose was in fact Portier. It was more than that, but still, Portier has no ambience. You know, Seri is all these lovely sepia tones and Valen is a bit somber but full of color... but Portier, sadly, has all the ambience of a puddle. I think that he's part of the reason nothing really ever came together. He's the glue that holds it all together, being the point of view character, and it ends up being a bit like holding your art project together with one of those super-cheap glue sticks.

Gert: Yeah, it'll hold until it has to wait for the art show the next day, and then in the morning, five minutes before show time, all the seams have come apart. And this has that feel. Fragmented.

Beth: I'm hoping the next one will flow better. You know, now that a lot of elements are already in place. Also, I'm really hoping that we'll get Ilario as a POV character instead. Barring that, I guess I'll just have to cross my fingers that Portier improves.

Gert: I don't dare hope for getting Ilario, given events near the end of The Spirit Lens. Portier seems too precious to Berg, sadly. But hopefully, as I said, Portier will improve with experience.

Beth: I guess we'll see, won't we?

Gert: Carol Berg has enough strong titles behind her that I'm quite willing to read the next COLLEGIA MAGICA book, despite the weaknesses of the first one here. So indeed we will.

Beth: I won't say I'm, you know, overly excited about it. The arrival of the second one isn't likely to be heralded by the squeeing-call of the extremely rare fangirl breed of Beth, as The Spirit Lens was. But try, try again, and all that.

Gert: Any author can have a fluke, and here's hoping this is one, and not the sign of yet another fantasy author grown unable to write good works.

Beth: Gosh, I hope not. I'd have to take drastic measures. Like shaving my eyebrows in mourning.

Gert: Wear black for a year. Yeah...   —Beth   Comments