A Succession of Bad Days

Graydon Saunders

May 2015 · Commonweal Book 2 · Tall Woods Books

About this ebook

Egalitarian heroic fantasy.  Experimental magical pedagogy, non-Euclidean ancestry, and some sort of horror from beyond the world.

Ratings and reviews

World-building A. Plot and characters B. This is not a short book, and I read it three times in the week I bought it, so five stars. The world is what our world might be, after a quarter of a million years of self-indulgent magicians. The Commonweel is a society that is trying to survive without being ruled by sorcerers. It is a society whose science is about on par with ours. (One gathers that they are better mathematicians and theoretical physicists than we are, but that use of some technologies has been rendered impractical or dangerous.) The Commonweel still trains children who are capable of significant magic. If the children are not to self-destruct, training must begin early and instill fine control. The novel follows a group of five adults who were not discovered early enough: Their chance of survival depends on an experimental course of study that introduces them to high-powered magic without the fine control from the start, in hopes that they will live to acquire finesse. The most engaging aspect of the book is in fact the world in which it's embedded. While readers focus on the main plot, a richly-imagined world is sketched out in our peripheral vision. This is a world in which children are not allowed to play on the grass without adult supervision, because the grass might eat them.

I read the March North and A Succession of Bad Days while on staying in a rental house with bad plumbing. I therefore appreciated the attention to detail brought to the subject and devoutly wished a water gate for my clogged sink. Alas, I have no skill in the Power. This book takes a long, askew look at a Edward, a wizard-that-shouldn't-be's coming-of-age in the Second Commonweal, one of only two nations not dominated by sorcerer-kings in a world of tyrannical, insane, and narcissistic wizards. Individuals endowed with absolute power have unpleasant affects on the fabric of society, it turns out, only prevented in the Commonweal by coercing every wizard within the nation-state into joining the Shape of Peace. The Shape of Peace is a gigantic spell that will utterly destroy violators of the Peace. Ed has only a few years to not only evolve into a entity that can handle the power without burning out, but sane and willing to abide by the Peace. Or die. On the way, Ed learns a lot about digging, plumbing, civil engineering, and weeding. Oh, and how not to do Very Bad Things. If you enjoy coming of age stories, gritty fantasy strongly flavored with idealism, extreme comma use, the works of Leo Frankowski (if he had written fantasy), and interesting world-building without sacrificing engaging characters, you might like this book (and the March North). However, if you struggled with Dhalgren, don't enjoy experimental texts or non-gendered writing, and don't find tales of practical magic intriguing, then I suggest you buy it anyway since, hell, it is cheap and you can always write a review. Personally, I can't wait for the next book in the series.

This was a very interesting book. It is primarily a character piece, because while there are a few action scenes, most of the time is spent on learning sorcery and doing large civil engineering projects. (When learning to wield vast cosmic power but lacking control, the two are more closely related than you might think.) It's certainly one of the most unique and interesting 'learning magic' stories I have read. The characters are also very well-done, both those of the students and those of the main teachers. The setting is also amazing. It takes the concept of ancient magic and then goes, "so how does this actually affect the environment and the people who don't have it"? What does thousands of years of dark lords creating critters and terrorizing the peasants look like, and what might an egalitarian society be like in such a setting? There's also plenty of questions about the ethics of power and the balance between society and individual. Also, as a history buff, seeing so many historical terms used for things instead of made-up terms was cool. (Lots of Anglo-Saxon government stuff, for example.) My one warning is that the prose is a bit idiosyncratic. It's not stream-of-thought precisely, but it is very conversational, and on occasion it can be confusing. Usually that seems deliberate, though, in times of sudden crisis where the viewpoint character is confused as well. It definitely rewards rereading.