Notorious Sorcerer (Part 3)
STATS
Title: Notorious Sorcerer
Series: The Burnished City (Book 1)
Author(s): Davinia Evans
Genre: Fantasy fiction
First Printing: September 2022
Publisher: Orbit
Rating: 3/10
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 skim and then read the book for yourself before coming back for the full analysis.
WORLDBUILDING (Everything but the Inquisitors)
Worldbuilding can make or break fantasy. It is a core selling point of this genre. People want to be dazzling, frightened, enthralled by something beyond their understanding of our own world. Worldbuilding might not make or break more grounded genres, but here, it is almost as important as the characters.
Evans had some fantastic ideas for her worldbuilding. She made creative choices and found fun ways to weave them together. Most of it is only a shell. There is nothing underneath the superficial likeness of a fantastical world.
We’re going to start this section with an overview of the concept and a brief discussion of how Evans handles exposition. We’ll then take a closer look at the city of Bezim, religion, the planes, and the magic system. What we won’t be covering is the antagonist faction: the inquisitors. When I first tried writing this section, I wanted to do everything in one go, but the analysis for the inquisitors ran so long that I couldn’t justify keeping it in the same post as the rest of the worldbuilding. We’ll have to get into them next week.
Make sure your tethers are fastened, everyone. We’re going in.
Overview
To kick this off, let’s look back upon the blurb for this book.
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.
This description is on-point. I’m not going to pretend that this is the most original or compelling setting ever written, but it is interesting. Bezim beckons to the readers, inviting them to follow the characters through its winding streets. There is so much potential for mystery and intrigue in Bezim, and so much potential for stories in its relationship to the magic of the world.
Exposition
Evans does a good job with exposition. As we’ll cover shortly, she falls short when it comes to providing exposition at the right time, but when she does provide it, the exposition blends seamlessly with the narrative. I never felt like I was being overloaded with information or bored by irrelevant details.
What’s more, Evans does a good job of utilizing parentheses in the narrative in a way that feels organic. She uses them to embed little asides and remarks into what would otherwise be bland paragraphs of description. They are also written in a way that fits the voice of the POV character of the scene in question. Whenever I read one of these, I felt like the POV character was turning to me and addressing me, yet my immersion was not shattered in the process.
Bezim
Bezim is a city of splendor. Here, magic is part of the economy, though it is heavily policed by the inquisitors. The rich indulge in grand celebrations, while even the poorest find pride and inspiration in the antics of the bravi tribes.
This city was an integral part of the “exercise in self-indulgence”. Evans crafted it to accommodate all of her “favourite things”. It has:
“Melodramatic street gangs”
“Exotic (to [Evans]) liquor”
“Decaying grandeur”
“Rock star opera singers”
“Elegant houses of disrepute”
“Ridiculous society fashions”
“Posh social clubs”
(Yes, all of that was listed within her interview.)
Evans calls this city “a love letter to so many magnificent fantasy cities that have lit [her] imagination on fire”. In her interview, she describes how she drew influences from Constantinople and Venice. This city was something Evans cared about and put effort into. While the product may not be anything overly remarkable, and I think that the story as a whole doesn’t really utilize the full potential of such a setting, there is little I can find by way of objective flaws in the city’s writing. It is something Evans genuinely wanted to write about, and so quality is present.
The Sundering and the Scarp
An important aspect of Bezim is that, according to the novel, it is the only place in the known world where magic (or, at least, the form of magic expressed through alchemy) works. We’re not given the specifics on this, but we do know that foreigners come to the city specifically to practice magic, and Bezim is somehow closer to the other planes of reality than any other place on the Mundane plane.
This connection is so integral that, a century and a half before the start of the story, a failed magical ritual caused a cataclysm. A portion of the city collapsed into the sea. This event came to be known as the Sundering; the collapsed cliff and the heap of rubble at the bottom came to be known as the Scarp, where the poorest people of the city live and the law is not enforced. The inquisitors of Bezim were tasked with preventing another Sundering by policing magic in the city.
Social Strata
The name “Bezim” means “ours” in the Old Lyraec tongue. When the Lyraec Empire collapsed, Bezim overthrew the last of the old nobility and claimed its independence. Now the city is governed by the people (or, at least, by the rich).
Despite its independence and supposed unity against outside tyranny, Bezim has clearly defined classes. The nobles hold the majority of power and wealth; beneath them, industrialists form a less powerful but still wealthy class. Everyone below that point is lumped into a nebulous lower class. The only division within this last group is that the people of the Scarp are identified as the lowest of the low.
The social strata of Bezim is a mixed bag. In isolation, it is fine. Evans provides just enough information for us to understand that Siyon is at the bottom of the ladder, Izmirlian is at the top, and that the power of the inquisitors is restricted by the influence of the upper classes. This is quite functional: she’s not providing extraneous detail. In context, the social strata are handled in a rather confusing manner. It’s used for Zagiri’s subplot and the Danelani subplot, which is fine on the surface, but the events and details within those subplots makes it hard to tell exactly how entrenched this class system is. (We’ll get more into this in Parts 4 and 5, while discussing the inquisitors and the plot.)
Bravi Tribes
The bravi tribes are the “melodramatic street gangs” that Evans wanted to include. They are a blend between the bravos of A Song of Ice and Fire and the greaser gangs from Grease.
Each tribe has its own iconography and identity; they will routinely meet for flashy duels. They engage in so much parkour that “running the tiles” has become a colloquial term for bravi running across the rooftops. Many bravi gain flashy titles or wield storied swords that have been passed down through their tribes. Nobles will often hire tribes to “raid” their parties as a form of entertainment. The inquisitors do not like the bravi tribes, but since they don’t openly flout the rules that regulate magic, most of their activities are outside of the inquisitors’ jurisdiction.
Much like the city of Bezim, this is an element of the story that is underutilized but otherwise free of obvious flaws. Evans put a lot of effort into writing them, and that effort shows.
The Summer Club
A “posh social club” of alchemists, the Summer Club flouts the authority of the inquisitors by claiming that the grand works of magic they pursue are strictly theoretical. Nihath and Auntie Geryss are both members; at the start of the book, joining the club seems like an unattainable dream to Siyon. It is here that he meets both Izmirlian and Danelani, thereby kicking subplots into motion. The Summer Club is tightly bound to scientific theory and precedents. They make a big deal over having conquered superstition and mastered magic, to the point that they have a painting of warriors slaying a dragon in one of their parlors to really hammer the idea home through symbolism.
Again, there’s not much going on here in terms of flaws or utilization. The most the Summer Club offers is a place for characters to meet and find one another. It is also treated as a haven against the inquisitors, though it is barely used as such within the events of the story.
Religion
Bezim is explicitly devoid of organized religion. This is spelled out very early in the book and maintained throughout. The only references to religion within the story are abandoned temples, such as the one that Siyon’s bravi tribe uses as a base of operations, or iconography and beliefs brought in by foreigners, use as Auntie Geryss.
My first impulse, upon reading this, was that Evans was trying to give herself an out from doing worldbuilding that she had no interest in writing. This works a lot better than Foundryside. At least this book isn’t fully of characters talking about God all the time without any explanation of how said characters view God. It is, however, lazy. Worldbuilding an entire religion and its associated worldview may not be necessary for every story, but Evans clearly thought it was important enough to this story that she had to write herself a hall pass to avoid having to think about it.
As I read further, I got the inkling that maybe Evans is trying to use absence of religion to enhance the themes, specifically the thematic conflict between the rational (represented by alchemy) and the abstract (represented by sorcery). Bezim’s alchemist pride themselves on having conquered superstition. On the flip side, Auntie Geryss (the only character with anything close to defined religious beliefs) is actively pushing for magic users to broaden their minds beyond the strictures of alchemy. It is entirely possible that Evans is playing the long game here, and that religion will get more exploration in future stories as part of a deeper dive into this thematic conflict.
I can’t draw a conclusion one way or the other at this point. I can only say that there are holes in other aspects of the world that could have been patched with the bare minimum of religious worldbuilding. This isn’t a missed opportunity so much as a source of problems.
The Planes
The magic of Notorious Sorcerer centers around the interactions between four planes of existence. While they have loose associations with the classical elements of Western lore, these connections are explicitly stated to be coincidences that early alchemists blew out of proportion in their efforts to rationalize magic through symbolism. The planes are:
The Mundane, or physical world, which is associated with earth. This is where Bezim is located and most of the story takes place.
The Empyreal, plane of truth and order, which is associated with fire. It is home to angels and phoenixes.
The Aethereal, which is associated with air. I couldn’t find anything in the book to explain what this plane embodies, though it appears to be connected to human voices (more on that later). It is home to djinn and will-o’-the-wisps.
The Abyss, plane of emotion and impulse, which is associated with water. It is home to demons, harpies, and krakens.
These planes have mutually antagonistic pairings. The Mundane is opposed by the Aethereal; the Empyreal is opposed by the Abyss.
I like that Evans put an more abstract spin on the properties of the planes, rather than just going with the classical elements. It reminds me a lot of the Eberron setting of D&D, where planes all embody metaphysical concepts that just happen to manifest through elemental power (such as how Risia is known as the Plane of Ice, but it is technically a manifestation of stillness and stasis). This is a one of those ideas that pulled me deeper into the story.
The problems start when one really starts to think about how these planes interact with other elements of the story.
Power of the Mundane (Heavy Spoilers)
Each of the planes, except for the Mundane, has a Power associated with it. This is a godlike being of unknown limits. It’s not entirely clear what the role of the Powers are, though there needs to be one for each plane for the planes to remain aligned.
At the start of Notorious Sorcerer, the planes of Bezim are out of alignment, which is causing magic to weaken. Addressing this problem serves as the A plot of the book. Nihath realizes that a new Power of the Mundane must be established to restore balance, and he and Siyon work towards this goal.
At the climax of the book, Siyon succeeds as becoming the Power of the Mundane. He gets to interact with the Powers of the other planes as an equal. He uses his leverage as the guy maintaining balance (which is something the other Powers want) to grant Izmirlian’s request to go beyond the planes.
What the story doesn’t tell us, though, is what it actually means for Siyon to be the Power. Is he a god? What powers does he gain? Is he just a peg holding the universe together? Given how the inquisitors are still against him at the end of the book, are they still a threat, or could he wipe them out with a wave of his hand?
Furthermore, what exactly is expected of him outside of balancing the weight of the other Powers? Evans engages is some sequel bait by saying the Siyon has problems he needs to address now that he’s a power, but she doesn’t tell us what those problems are. It reads almost as though Notorious Sorcerer was meant to be a single book, but when her agent asked for a sequel, Evans slotted a mystery box into the end to make it seem like she had a plan for what came next.
Portals (Heavy Spoilers)
Human beings can open portals to the other planes. This allows them to harvest extraplanar ingredients for use in alchemy. This travel is stated to by spiritual rather than physical (though the body of the person using the portal does disappear when they go through). To ensure that they can return safely to the Mundane, the delver needs a tether, which can be anything that is symbolically connected to both the Mundane and humanity specifically (like an old, dirty rope from a dock, kitchen twine, or a bedsheet). Losing that tether could cause the delver to become trapped in that other plane.
This is used to thrilling effect in the opening of the book. In Chapter 1, Siyon makes a seemingly routine trip to the Empyreal. It ends with him nearly being killed by an angel. In her attempt to cut his tether, she sets fire to it, thereby providing him with an ingredient (angelfire) that he can sell. This sale doesn’t directly kick the plot into gear, but it does help to establish the Summer Club.
Where things fall apart is with the limits of portals.
As mentioned in Danelani’s character analysis, it is not clear why his disappearance to the Abyss is at all special. All he should have had to do was step through a portal and untie his tether. He shouldn’t have needed Siyon, and the act shouldn’t have threatened to cause another Sundering (which it apparently came close to doing). The only reason he needed Siyon’s help was a narrative one: in exchange for selling Danelani a phoenix feather to open said portal, Siyon requests Danelani’s protection from the inquisitors, which Danelani pays off by giving Siyon a ring with his family’s crest. This ring is crucial to rescuing Danelani later in the story. In other words, Danelani’s subplot only happened the way that it did so that Siyon could be the one to resolve it.
There is also the matter of Siyon being locked out of the Aethereal plan midway through the story. I don’t think that this was ever explained. It’s hinted that this is an issue of planar instability, but then Siyon overcomes the barrier easily when he needs to get into the Abyss. While there are rules that somewhat explain this, the fact that the limitation exists at all was arbitrary and pointless, as Siyon could easily overcome it when the story needed him to do so.
Human Connections (Heavy Spoilers)
Each human being is connected to the Empyreal, Aethereal, and the Abyss. The loss of one of these connections impacts how humans can interact with the world. Severing the connection to the Aethereal, for example, robs a human of his voice.
In concept, this is not a bad idea. The implementation … well …
This is why Siyon needs to harvest semen.
As part of his efforts to send Izmirlian beyond the planes, Siyon figures out that he needs to cancel out Izmirlian’s connections to each of the other planes. He decides to do this by using fluids from Izmirlian as a symbolic medium. Tears represent the Empyreal, breath is the Aethereal, and semen is the Abyss.
We’re about to get into this more in the magic system, but for now, just note that this was a transparent setup to ratchet up the sexual tension. It’s most obvious with the semen harvesting. The rationalization used to harvest tears points out that sweat could also be used for the Abyss, yet this ritual just had to use semen, and it apparently had to be semen extracted through sex. What’s more, that same rationalization for tears points out that blood would be a better choice for the Empyreal than tears, but Siyon dismissed it because it was “too important” (without specifying what that meant). It makes it sound like any bodily fluid could be used, regardless of the strength, so long as the symbolism exists. If Siyon could cut corners for the Empyreal, why did the Abyss (the plane that seems to care the least about specifics) need to be so precise?
So, yeah. It is evident that Evans started with sex and scenes of sexual tension and worked backwards to write this element of the magic system. She wanted to have it both ways. Semen had to be a vital ingredient to facilitate the erotica (and the setup to that extraction is certainly written like pornography). However, Evans also needed the flexibility to use tears so that Siyon and Izmirlian could look deeply into one another’s eyes and hold one another’s hands in a manner that told the audience that the kissing would totes start any page now. (It didn’t happen for almost another 50 pages.)
The Magic System
Okay. I’ve griped enough about the planes. What about the actual magic system of Notorious Sorcerer?
While there is only one magic system, it goes by two names. “Alchemy” refers to magic practiced through scientific methods; “sorcery” refers to the older, more mystical practices. (For the purposes of this review, I have been and will continue to refer to it as “magic”, only referencing alchemy or sorcery when the distinction matters within the text.)
Magic in this setting focused on the use of symbols. When alchemists use extraplanar ingredients, they aren’t practicing chemistry. Instead, they are combining the manifestations of abstract ideas to create magical effects. Those symbols don’t necessarily need to be extraplanar ingredients, either. As mentioned before, Danelani’s ring, due to its symbolic connection to the son of Bezim’s prefect, has significant magical potential in it. We also get scenes where emotions and belief are harvested from crowds of people through theatrical rituals, thereby serving a fuel. Literally any bullshit can have power in alchemy – and I mean this quite literally, as at one point, Siyon scrapes ox dung off the street to use as a symbol.
This is, in concept, a great example of a soft magic system – that is to say, a magic system that is light upon rules (such as the magic of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter). Soft magic systems treat magic as a force beyond human understanding. There’s a rule in fantasy writing (often attributed to Brandon Sanderson, who found an elegant way to word it) that the ability of a magic system to solve problems should be proportional to its limitations. A soft magic system, with few apparently limits, should therefore be used as little as possible.
Soft Foundations (Heavy Spoilers)
I am not usually a fan of soft magic systems. I like it when magic can be used to solve problems, and thus prefer hard systems (those with rigid and/or easily understood rules, like the alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist). Notorious Sorcerer managed to enthrall me nonetheless. The magic system was so compelling that, for the first half of the book, I thought it was going to show me how a soft magic system could really shine in modern literature.
And then the book overreached.
I may have first noticed the superficiality problem through Zagiri’s subplot, and I traced the problem back to Notorious Sorcerer being an “exercise in self-indulgence”, but it was the magic system where superficiality became a leaden weight that smashed this book headlong into the ground. Evans did use this magic system to solve problems, without providing the depth (the rules and limitations) needed to preserve narrative tension. She used it to resolve the A plot of planar alignment and the B plot of Danelani’s disappearance. The two main drivers of the story were casually dismissed. What’s worse, it was done in a manner that almost seemed to say, “Because the author says so.”
Recall back to my analysis of Siyon, where I said that his observations were used as a crutch to fill holes in the magic system. This is where that comes into play. Because the rules of the magic system are almost always explained in the moment where the magic becomes relevant, we the audience cannot anticipate whether any act of magic will succeed or fail. The magic doesn’t feed into a system of cause and effect. It feels very much like the system is being made by Evans as she went along. As a result, regardless of whether an act of magic succeeds of fails, there is always a sense of artificiality. The magic is being used to prod the plot into whatever direction Evans needs it to go.
By the climax of this book, I simply didn’t care anymore. My immersion was ruined. I had no further reason to be invested. There was no doubt in my mind that Siyon would succeed at the very end, for the simple fact that I was almost at the end of the book. All tension was gone.
Crunchy Bits (Heavy Spoilers)
The funny thing about this mess of a magic system is that, after finishing the book, I am convinced that Evans didn’t intend to write a soft magic system. I think she wanted to write a hard magic system. She just didn’t care enough to put in the effort … unless it serviced the “exercise in self-indulgence”.
The erotica subplot is the only place in the book where the magic truly makes sense, where there is a sense of cause and effect. I could anticipate what was going to happen next. The logic of using bodily fluids as symbols to cancel out the planes is both explained prior to becoming relevant and supported by previously established lore within the story. With the tears and breath, we get to see Siyon experimenting with extraplanar ingredients, trying and failing before finding the right balance. Rules were established, limits were obeyed, and goals were accomplished accordingly.
Ultimately, this magic system isn’t so much a soft magic system as – you guessed it – a superficial one. Evans wrote the magic to justify the erotica. Outside of that, she used it to push the plot in any direction she pleased, without any care for how it would affect the overall experience. The absence of rules and limitations reflects neglect rather than a desire to subject the characters to something beyond their comprehension.
Lessons Learned
When it comes to writing fantasy, worldbuilding can’t just be treated as window dressing, especially if elements of the worldbuilding are directly relevant to the plot or to character arcs. A single mishandled element can undermine the stakes of the conflicts.
By all means, create a world that is glorious to behold on the surface. Draw the readers in with it. However, because readers will then want to explore and immerse themselves in your vision, make sure that it has some depth. The world you create needs to hold up to at least a casual examination. Otherwise, the entire story can come apart at the seams.
DESCENDING THE SCARP
Hopefully, you can all see why these ideas are so compelling on the surface. Perhaps you may also agree with my analysis about the void beneath. If not, perhaps what we cover next week will convince you of both.
I have a lot to say about the inquisitors of Notorious Sorcerer. They had so much potential, but they were utterly wasted. What’s worse, though, is that they do to the characters what the magic system does to the plot. Nearly every character whom we’re supposed to root for is assassinated by the inquisitors’ poor writing.
It’s bearing down on us fast, folks. Hang tight, and I’ll see you again soon.
