Notorious Sorcerer (Part 1)
Hello, all. Welcome back.
A few days ago, my new laptop spontaneously died. While I’m usually diligent about offline backups, I’d lost track of time these past few weeks. I lost everything I did after January 22nd. For context, that includes Parts 3 and 4 of the Once Upon a Time rewrite, which are (thankfully) already posted.
Why do I share this story?
Because the book we are going to start reviewing today evoked such a powerful reaction from me that I wrote a 13,000 word, 5-part breakdown of why and how it went so horribly wrong. That behemoth review was among the files that are currently trapped in a dead machine. So potent was my experience with this book that I was able to rewrite the whole thing from memory.
Before we dive into this behemoth series, I want to reiterate a point I made in the opening of the original review: I really wanted to like Notorious Sorcerer. While the back cover blurb was nothing remarkable – I picked it up mainly to see what the author, Davinia Evans, would do with her version of alchemy – the opening chapters had me hooked. This is, without exaggeration, the strongest opening to any fantasy book that I have read in years. There’s a jaunt to another plane, a near-death experience at the hands of an angel, and immediate immersion into the culture of the city of Bezim. It immediately got me invested through exciting action, a fascinating world, and likeable characters. Had Evans maintained that level of quality, this would easily have been the first book I’ve reviewed to get a 10/10.
That sort of momentum is hard to maintain, of course. Quality declined considerably by the midpoint of the book. However, when you fall off Mount Everest, you’re still going to hit the ground at a pretty high elevation. This book could still have nailed a 7/10.
Then I read the back half.
This book nosedived into the dross and made an utter mockery of the intelligence of the audience. It’s borderline offensive in how bad it gets.
Much like with Shadow of the Conqueror, no one would learn or grow from me simply saying that this book is bad. Time needs to be taken to really break down the things that didn’t work, the few things that did work, and why exactly all this happened. We’ll break this review down into five parts.
· Part 1: Premise, Rating, Note to the Author, and the Content Warning / Context
· Part 2: Characters
· Parts 3 & 4: Worldbuilding
· Part 5: Plot, Themes, and Conclusion
Roll up your sleeves, folks. This is going to be messy.
STATS
Title: Notorious Sorcerer
Series: The Burnished City (Book 1)
Author(s): Davinia Evans
Genre: Fantasy fiction
First Printing: September 2022
Publisher: Orbit
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers will be necessary to properly break down this story. I will include “Heavy Spoilers” in the heading for any section where further detail is required. I will keep the first paragraph of section as spoiler-free as possible in case you want to read the book for yourself before coming back for the full analysis.
PREMISE
Before we start, let’s see with Evans (or, at least, Orbit), has to say about this book. The following was copy-pasted directly from the Barnes & Noble website. It’s the same as the blurb on the back cover of the paperback, albeit with the last paragraph (the one in bold) shuffled from the bottom of the blurb to the top.
A wickedly entertaining fantasy debut bursting with wild magic, chaotic sword-fighting street gangs, brazen flirting, malevolent harpies, and one defiant alchemist.
Welcome to Bezim, where sword-slinging bravi race through the night, and where rich and idle alchemists make magic out of mixing and measuring the four planes of reality.
Siyon Velo, Dockside brat turned petty alchemist, scrapes a living hopping between the planes to harvest ingredients for the city’s alchemists. But when Siyon accidentally commits an act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight—which is a bad place to be when the planes start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send the city into the sea.
It will take a miracle to save Bezim. Good thing Siyon has pulled off the impossible before. Now he just has to master it.
Nothing in this blurb is an outright lie. However, there are a few key details missing, which we’ll get into with Content Warning / Context section. Other points (like the “malevolent harpies”) are emphasized despite playing little or no role in the story.
RATING: 3/10
This book’s issues can be summed up in one word: superficial.
I cannot emphasize strongly enough how great the opening of this book is. It begs the reader to keep reading. It invites us to explore the deeper mysteries of the plot and world and to understand the characters in greater depth.
The issue is … there is no depth. The ‘mystery’ is not a call to the unknown; it’s a blank space. Many of the characters, while functional in the narrative, lack deeper drives or motivations. The worldbuilding is a shell over a void, cracking at the slightest bit of pressure. Notorious Sorcerer can’t even pull off an effective twist, as a twist requires context to have any sort of impact. The mere act of reflecting back upon what came before destroys those twists by revealing that they have nothing to support them.
A lack of depth at the start of a book is fine. One could even argue that it is ideal. You don’t want to overload the reader with information before they have gotten invested in the story. Once they are invested, though, the writer needs to provide depth. Things need to be explained. A foundation needs to be laid, and the story needs to be built vertically atop that foundation.
Evans did not build a foundation – or, rather, she did build a foundation, but it was for a ridiculously small footprint at one corner of the story. She then expanded outward onto soft, uncompacted ground. The story buckles under the weight of all of the new ideas that she introduces but doesn’t invest the effort to properly support. It overextends so far that its ending outright collapses.
NOTE TO THE AUTHOR
Ms. Evans, if you are somehow reading this review and didn’t quit after seeing my rating, I want to know that I admire your passion for your work. You are at your best when you are writing something in which you are emotionally invested. I admire the creative choices you attempted with your worldbuilding and the effort to infuse messages that you care about. I also meant what I said about you having written the strongest opening I’ve read in years.
With that said, your “exercise in self-indulgence” (as you so eloquently put it) is an insult to every fantasy writer who puts genuine effort into their craft.
Passion alone does not make for well-written fiction. Discipline is also needed. It is what ensures that the passion is funneled into a structured narrative that can support its own weight, to ensure that the reader experience is not contingent on the mindless distractions of sex and spectacle. With Notorious Sorcerer, you demonstrated a brazen lack discipline. The only parts of your story that work are your self-indulgences. Everything else is filler that shows a distinct lack of care and effort. Had your self-indulgence been the core of the narrative, this might have still worked, but you chose to make the self-indulgence a sideshow. You chose to shove the material that you neglected into our faces and demand that we be entertained by it.
To be clear, the purpose of this multi-part review is not to display my utter contempt at what you have created. I want this to be a learning experience for my readers. We will get the appreciate the things you did well (and, when it came to your passions, you usually did well), understand why everything else falls apart, and learn how to emulate the good while avoiding the bad for our own work. I can’t and won’t force you to come along on this journey with us, but if you do, I hope you will take this analysis constructively and learn from it.
CONTENT WARNING / CONTEXT
I think that Notorious Sorcerer was doomed to superficiality from its inception. Evans did not want to write fantasy literature. What she wanted to write – and, ultimately, did write – was yaoi erotica fanfiction nestled inside a shell of fantasy literature. This smut was then misleadingly marketed based upon that shell.
For those unaware, a few definitions:
“Yaoi” is Japanese slang for homosexual relationships between two men.
“Erotica” is pornography masquerading as literature. An example would be the 50 Shades series.
“Fanfiction” refers to a fiction that is set within an established world and story created by another author and that is neither part of the official canon or endorsed by the creator. 50 Shades originated as a fanfiction: it was a Twilight erotica that was edited to be legally distinct before going through traditional publishing. The term “fanfiction” often gets thrown around derogatively these days to dismiss prequels, sequels, reboots, and spinoffs that show a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material – such as in the case of The Last Jedi or The Rings of Power. For the purposes of this analysis, I will be using the non-derogative version of the term (despite what my tone might otherwise indicate).
Why Notorious Sorcerer is Erotica
One of the subplots of this book involves our protagonist, Siyon Velo, taking a commission to perform a magical ritual on behalf of the man who will become his sexual partner by the end of the book, Izmirlian Hisarani. As part of this ritual, Siyon needs to harvest metaphysical essences from Izmirlian in the form of fluids: tears, breath, and semen. I’m sure I shouldn’t need to spell out how this is used to escalate sexual tension as the story progresses.
I’m sure that Evans would prefer that this subplot be labeled “romance” rather than erotica. However, that would imply that the subplot follows the emotional growth of two characters and their relationship. That is not what we got here. This subplot is just scenes of men being aroused by scents, textures, body temperature, and the shapes of ones another’s bodies (details that are typically emphasized in pornography written by women, for women), even when all they are doing is standing in a hallway or sitting opposite one another to discuss metaphysics. It exists purely to arouse the audience with stifling levels of sexual tension and then reward them with the experience of the characters having sex. This is pornography. Softcore pornography, perhaps, but still pornography.
That’s why I call Izmirlian a “sexual partner” rather than a “love interest”. As disquieting as I found the handling of sexual content in Foundryside, I was successfully convinced that Sancia and Berenice were developing an emotional basis for a relationship. They weren’t panting after each other in nearly every scene where they happened to be within ten feet of one another. Siyon and Izmirlian did not grow emotionally. At most, they coexisted alongside one another while the book screamed at us that they were totes going to start having sex any page now. Said screaming continued for roughly 300 pages of this 400-page book.
Why Notorious Sorcerer is Fanfiction
The fact that this was not an original work, but rather someone’s fantasy involving established characters, clicked into place when I realized this story had been structured to necessitate semen harvesting. It’s the sort of weird application of the worldbuilding that one might expect from a fantasy fanfiction. However, I’m not just going off intuition here. The author herself confirmed it.
Orbit likes to include author interviews at the backs of this books. It’s a nice touch that gives us a chance to know the authors better. Evans had this to say about the origins of her book:
“The very first kernel of the story was actually a fanfic, a fantasy alternative-universe story I wrote for a friend’s birthday, featuring some characters we both loved. It was an exercise in self-indulgence , cramming as many favourite things into the setting and story as I could.”
I’m not sure what the source material for this fanfiction might have been. My best guess would be Fullmetal Alchemist. This isn’t because the magic system is called alchemy (though it is something of a blend between Equivalent Exchange and the magic from Harry Potter). There are a pair of antagonists in this story how come across as villainous versions of Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye, right down to the association with fire.
Why This Matters
Here’s the thing: when art is divorced for real-world context and individual experience, there are very few things that are inherently detrimental to the objective quality of that art. The inclusion of sexual content or an origin as fanfiction does not mean that a work of fiction must necessarily be bad. Problems instead arise from the execution of such elements.
I figured out that this book was erotica around page 130. Originally, that fact was not going to be a huge part of my analysis. I was certainly going to follow the precedent set by Foundryside, calling attention to that fact (so that people who don’t want to read erotica could avoid this book) but not actually factoring into the overall rating. Likewise, the fact that it was fanfiction wasn’t a big deal. I probably wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it at all.
However, once I hit the semen harvesting scene, I had a revelation. There is a pattern to the flaws in Notorious Sorcerer. A direct correlation exists between the quality of the writing and the proximity to the erotica. The only exceptions to this trend are the “favourite things” that Evans really wanted to include. You can use her interview as a checklist to identify the elements of the book that work the best.
Evans puts considerable effort into her self-indulgence, and that effort is only applied to said self-indulgence. Everything else is neglected. As stated above, this could be workable if the erotica was the main plot of the story, or if the main plot was driven by her passions, but that simply isn’t the case. The erotica is treated like a C plot, and the passions are pretty things sprinkled throughout a sea of filler. It is very alluring filler, but filler all the same. And because the A plot, B plot, and pretty much everything else are neglected filler, the book as a whole grows gradually worse the deeper one goes into it.
In other words, Notorious Sorcerer is superficial because it exists as nothing but a vehicle for self-indulgence, and in this case, the self-indulgence manifests through erotica and the cramming of personal interests into a fanfiction.
Marketing
When last I checked, yaoi erotica is not a genre with a vast audience. It has a thriving niche market, to be sure, but it’s not something that is marketed to general audiences.
Yet, for some reason, Notorious Sorcerer was sold on shelves in the Fantasy section of Barnes & Noble, side-by-side with Orbit’s other offerings. Nothing on the cover informs the reader about its true nature or target audience.
Look back to the blurb that I posted under Premise. There’s no mention of Izmirlian. There’s no mention about the yaoi elements (which is particularly odd, given that we live in an era where identity politics are heavily marketed, even in escapist fantasy stories). The closest indictor we get to this book’s true nature is that reference to “brazen flirting”. This is laughable. My Dress-Up Darling had “brazen flirting” (and even that example is pushing it). Notorious Sorcerer is pornographic description of men being aroused while not doing anything sexual, focusing on details that is characteristic of pornography written by women for women.
There are multiple parties, including Evans herself, who could be held accountable for this misleading marketing. I think Orbit is the one who has the most serious questions to answer. Setting aside the issue of how their editors thought this book met their usual standards of quality (look back through my previous reviews to get an idea of those standards), why didn’t they market it honestly? If they thought it was worth publishing, they could at least have been honest with their target audience. If they didn’t want to attach their brand name to erotica, then they should have passed on the book. Prior to reading Notorious Sorcerer, I told the Orbit logo as a mark of quality. Now, that credibility has taken a hit.
Lessons Learned
Having passion about aspects of your work is a wonderful thing. Tolkien is proof of that. We would not have the genre-defining works of his legendarium were he not a philologist who waned a world in which his languages could exist. I don’t fault Evans for wanting to fold her own interests into her work.
The issue is that well-written stories are not merely self-indulgence packed in filler. An effort needs to be made to interweave one’s passions into the narrative that is promised to the audience. Writers need to make a concentrated effort to ensure that the entire story has adequate depth for a strong foundation. Tolkien made that effort; Evans did not. Neglecting the aspects that we are not passionate about it a recipe for a total collapse.
DEEP DIVE
Now that we have the context, let’s get on with the review.
Oh, yes. All of that is just groundwork. Keep what we just covered in mind as we go forward. That pattern of quality will be demonstrated to you as we progress.
Next time, we’ll dive into the characters. This will be the section where I have the most positive things to say. While Evans’s characters aren’t nearly strong enough to redeem this book – they are still victims of the superficiality problem – they at least fall onto a spectrum from enjoyable to functional.
I am currently working on moving internationally. I cannot guarantee when the next part of this review will be up (or that my backup computer won’t also die), so I can’t guarantee when the next installment will release. Hopefully it will be sometime next week. If not, I will post an update to Twitter.
Hang tight, folks. This review is going to be a bumpy ride.
