Hard Magic by Larry Correia

Hard Magic

The Grimnoir Chronicles #1

Publisher: Baen (2011)

Author: Larry Correia

Genre: Urban, Fantasy, Alternate History

Pages: 624

Price: $7.99

Jake Sullivan is a war hero, a private eye – and an ex-con. He's free because he has a magical talent and the Feds need his help apprehending criminals with their own magical abilities. But the last operation Jake was sent on went completely wrong, and Delilah Jones, an old friend in happier times, had too much magical muscle with her for the Feds to handle, even with Jake's help.

It got worse. Jake found out that not only have the Feds been lying to him, but there was a secret war being waged by opposing forces of magic-users. Worse still, he had attracted the attention of one side's ruthless leaders – who were of the opinion that Jake was far too dangerous to be permitted to live...

The first book of the Grimnoir Chronicles, Hard Magic, by Larry Correia is a mix of urban fantasy, alternate history, noir story telling, and hints of steampunk. While he's trying to appeal to a number of different fan bases; I think that having so many cross-genre elements kept the story from being as focused as it might have been. I think this issue was realized by the author early on, as after the first couple of chapters the noir aspects of the story are, for the most part, forgotten. Jake Sullivan is billed as a licensed investigator, but aside from his initial involvement with the Bureau of Investigation and renowned law man Melvin Purvis, the detective angle of the character is dropped very early. The story isn't told in first-person, or from the point of view of only one character, so it doesn't fit the genre in that regard either. Sure it's pessimistic and Sullivan is in a situation he's not very fond of, but if you're reading this book because of the noir in Grimnoir you may be disappointed.

I found the word itself fascinating. Sometime before the Civil War human beings began to show signs of magical talent. The degree of power varies by person, and only one power manifested itself in an individual, but a new area of human ability was ushered in by the arrival of these “Actives.” Upon sitting down to review Hard Magic I was struck by the similarities to Brandon Sanderson's Misborn system of magic; differing levels of power, one power per person, and rare cases of multiple disciplines popping up in a person. The powers themselves suffered from a lack of consistency in their application. At one point the reader is told that they take concentration to use, a chapter or two later it's revealed that a character's power activated instinctively while he was unconscious. Late in the book it's revealed that the power is a sentient thing, which I have decided to use as an explanation for the unconscious usage.

As you can imagine these new abilities caused the course of history as we know it to be severely altered. World War I was fought against the Germans, who used the reanimated corpses of their own soldiers to prolong the fight. Between the atrocities seen in Europe, and Japan becoming a superpower, America has adopted a strict isolationist policy. Each chapter opened with an excerpt from the book's world's written records, altered appropriately to reflect the changes magic's appearance has wrought on civilization, such as: Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Man and Selection of Human Magical Abilities. I could have used some more of these touches to get a feel for the world. The huge differences in the world were mentioned, but little of the mundane. The addition of a group of militant Actives that could be blamed for one of the attacks in the story felt like it popped out of no where since the social climate and potential unrest went unexplored through the majority of the book.

The main plot; a well-funded and extremely powerful group of antagonists are opposed by a small and 'on the run' group of resistance fighters that are forced to work in secret due to the bad guy's broad reach. Their mission is to stop the bad guys from locating the pieces of and deploying a superweapon of tremendous power. This isn't anything that the reader hasn't seen before, but there's enough going on in the setting and with the characters to keep it from feeling like a land-bound Star Wars. The main characters, Jake Sullivan and Faye Vierra, are polar opposites. Jake is a well traveled and experienced man who has seen is fair share of fights and Faye is a wide-eyed farm girl still in her teens. I had no problems with the characterization of Sullivan, he's a deceptively thoughtful individual whose size and martial abilities usually have people assuming he's a dumb thug. Faye on the other hand is a girl fresh off the farm entering a violent world that's unlike anything she's experienced before. At times her internal dialogue seems more childish than it should be given the fact that she's in her late teens. Her ability to so quickly make the transition from innocent teenager to cold-blooded killer was jarring, but it was good to see a female character taking such a prominent role in action. Aside from Delilah and Madi, the other characters were a difficult to differentiate at times. Once the Grimnoir knights assembled into one group I found it to be a task to keep Dan, Francis, and Heinrich straight in my mind. I always had to wait for them to use their power before I really knew who I was dealing with.

To wrap this one up, and give the subsequent books something to focus on, the author reveals that the threat posed by the bad guy, the Chairman, is minor compared to what's lurking beyond our hero's scope of imagination. The Chairman reveals that his actions have actually been for the good of mankind, trying to protect them from an otherworldly evil. Much like the Lord Ruler in the aforementioned Mistborn books; the reader is promised even more dangerous times ahead as the seemingly evil protector of mankind falls to the good guys. I'll reiterate that the similarities only occurred to me upon finished the book and sitting down to write about it, so while they're there it didn't detract from the reading experience for me.

Conclusion: Despite some familiar plot elements and a mash-up of genres, Hard Magic was a fun read that kept me turning pages until the end. While the setting could have used more detail, maybe at the expense of descriptions of some of the larger battles, it was an interesting twist on the world as we know it. The periphery characters could have used some fleshing out, but the main characters made up for their shortcomings. The magic's symbiotic relationship with humanity is an intriguing idea that might help explain some of the inconsistencies in the magical rules.

Rating: 7.75/10