Where I Learned History from the Fantasy

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think this is an incredible book, and I have no idea how many people have read it, but it's not enough. I should be seeing this all over Twitter and TikTok and YouTube and I'm not. Crazy.

This is a retelling of events in England, France, and Haiti in the late 1700s, dealing with the abolitionist movement and the French Revolution. It's set in a universe almost identical to our own, except that magic is real (though generally prohibited, except for among aristocracy). The main characters are the real people involved in those events--Robespierre, Danton, and Desmoulins in France, Pitt and Wilberforce in England, Toussaint in Haiti, and all of the people surrounding them. The scholarship is rock solid, and the unfolding of complex events is handled with such confidence, such assurance, that I was blown away.

The characters are wonderfully drawn, becoming very real to me. I don't know what the actual people were like, whether or not this is a fair representation (I tend to think it is), but I feel like I know these people in the book. The author is so good at giving us, in the midst of conversations and arguments and speeches and riots and battles, a nuanced look into the minds of these characters, including their motivations and intentions and regrets and dreams, and it is presented with such clarity that I marveled over and over. It was as if I was getting just the right amount of help to make perfect sense of their actions, and I do not usually feel this way.

The writing itself, the language, is just incredible. Not flamboyant; I don't mean that. And not grungy or utilitarian. It's smooth prose with just enough poetry to round off the rough corners:

"His magic began to stir in his blood, trying to help him through the parade of meetings and parliamentary sessions. By the end of most nights, his head throbbed, his stomach spasmed painfully, and London's bloodlines were a dizzy swirl in his senses; by morning, either elixir or sleep had done its job, and he felt better, or close enough. He didn't mention this to anyone; it felt ridiculous to talk about being overworked when the work in question sent men to death and agony. Instead, he found himself telling half his cabinet to send him their work because he was relatively unoccupied. He had no idea why he always did this, or why everyone always seemed to believe him."

The effect is effortless clarity, and I thought it was incredible.

The only thing that I didn't love was the pacing, though there was nothing to be done, really; this tells the story of several nations over many years, so it is necessarily episodic, with a huge narrative arc whose contours are hard to make out over pages or chapters. Some days I didn't pick it up. However, every time I did open it, it was a pleasure.

Every scene felt necessary. The reframing of so many historical details is mesmerizing. But it moves along, as you would expect, more like history than a novel. It develops over time. Instead of being frustrated by that (which sometimes happens to me) I let it move its own way, letting it go the speed it wanted to go, and I just flowed along with it. Patience. Step by step. By reading it in small chunks over rather a long time, I found I liked it very much.

Overall, a great book. An enthusiastic 5/5. I loved the way these real world events seem to make more sense through a fantasy prism, through a fictional retelling, and I'm amazed at the quality of both the academic precision and the artistic creativity found in this novel. I'm already ordering the next book, plus a standalone by this author. So--recommended!

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