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Birthday Reviews: Jim C. Hines’s “Spell of the Sparrow”

Birthday Reviews: Jim C. Hines’s “Spell of the Sparrow”

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Sword and Sorceress XXI-small Sword and Sorceress XXI-back-small

Cover by Arthur Rackham, 1910

Jim C. Hines was born on April 15, 1974.

Hines took first place in the Writers of the Future first quarter contest in 1999 for his story “Blade of the Bunny.” His novel Red Hood’s Revenge was nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. In 2012, he won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.

“Spell of the Sparrow” first appeared in Sword and Sorceress XXI, edited by Diana L. Paxson. An audio version was included in PodCastle 13, edited by Rachel Swirsky. Hines included it in his e-book collection Kitemaster and Other Stories and it was also reprinted in his collection The Goblin Master’s Grimoire.

While there are many tales of changelings and children who are abducted by fairies, Hines goes for a different story in “Spell of the Sparrow.” Alycia and James are two happily married former thieves with a daughter who, against her mother’s wishes, sneaks off to practice magic. Their lives are thrown into turmoil when Basi, a Cloudling, turns up, having cast a love spell on James. Although Hines explains that Cloudlings use bird magic, and Basi has a sparrow as a familiar, he never fully explains what she is, nor why she chose to cast a spell on James.

“Spell of the Sparrow” is a puzzle story, with James in love with both Alycia and Basi, unable and unwilling to betray either one. Alycia and their daughter, Mel, must try to figure out a way to break the spell, although Basi, and Hines, set enough strictures on the way Cloudling magic works and Mel’s abilities that breaking the spell becomes nearly impossible.

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Unbound: Flipping the Pages of Reality

Unbound: Flipping the Pages of Reality

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UnboundFor those of us who love books, they are often like windows into their own vibrant, living worlds. The idea that these stories contain a magical power to transport the reader to a new world, not merely figuratively but also literally, has shown up before, perhaps most prominently in The Neverending Story. In recent years, the idea of storybook worlds being tied to our own have become the driving force behind the popular television series Once Upon a Time. And, of course, many magical systems throughout fantasy literature have involved words of power.

Jim C. Hines has contributed one of the most intriguing interpretations on this theme in his Magic Ex Libris series. The first two books, Libriomancer and Codex Born, have been previously reviewed by our very own Alana Joli Abbott, but here’s the quick recap:

Isaac Vainio is a libriomancer, a magician with the ability to tap into the magic of books, drawing objects from them into the real world. His particular interest is science fiction and fantasy, allowing him to manifest anything from a lightsaber to a laser assault rifle to healing potions.

Magic has its limits, though. Isaac, with more skill and tenacity than common sense, has pushed beyond those limits more than most other libriomancers. So much so that he has come directly into contact with a dark presence that exists within books, a consciousness called the devourers, which has existed on the periphery of magic for centuries.

The third book, Unbound (Amazon), brings this conflict between the libriomancers and the devourers to a head. Isaac begins the book at about the lowest point imaginable. Not to give away too many spoilers from the end of Codex Born, but Isaac has no access to his magic and has been ostracized from the Porters, the magical society founded and led by the near-immortal sorcerer Johannes Gutenberg. (Yes, that Johannes Gutenberg. Like John O’Neill, reading keeps him young.) But this doesn’t prevent him from trying to hunt down more information about the devourers.

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Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Libriomancer

Alana Joli Abbott Reviews Libriomancer

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libriomancerLirbriomancer
Jim C. Hines
DAW (320 pgs, $24.95, hardcover August 2012)
Reviewed by Alana Joli Abbott

We have met this protagonist, and he is us.

Whenever I open a Jim Hines novel, I expect to have a good time – humor mixed with some soul pondering, deep character development, fast action, and snappy dialogue. So I was unsurprised that Libriomancer had all of these things in spades, plus a unique use of magic and a fractured and cobbled together cosmology that makes complete sense as a whole. What I didn’t expect was to see myself in the pages. With Isaac Vainio, Hines has created a protagonist who not only knows and loves the same geek pop culture that I do, but who has a passion for books as deep as my own. In Isaac’s case, this passion, the shared belief in the worlds that inhabit the pages of real-world books, allows him to reach inside those pages and draw objects into the real world.

When the book begins, Isaac has been forbidden from using his magic. He knows about a world populated by magical creatures – both indigenous to the real world and brought into it through the worlds of books – but he’s unable to access it. He’s an incredibly strong libriomancer – a magic user who uses books as both, as Isaac says, a church and an armory – but his rash decisions in the field have relegated him to desk work at a library. (As a former library worker myself, Isaac’s clear love of and appreciation for libraries resonates almost as deeply as his love of created worlds.) When he is attacked by vampires, and rescued by a curvy and kick-ass dryad named Lena, he has no choice but to give in to his longing to return to practicing magic. And it’s a good thing he does: the Porters, the guild of libriomancers dedicated to protecting the world from supernatural dangers, are facing an all out war, with their leader, Johannes Gutenberg, missing.

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Book Review: Jim C. Hines’ The Mermaid’s Madness

Book Review: Jim C. Hines’ The Mermaid’s Madness

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themermaidsmadnessThe Mermaid’s Madness

Jim C. Hines
DAW (339 pp, $7.99, 2009)
Reviewed by Andrew Zimmerman Jones

Jim Hines has developed a name for himself by taking traditional fantasy and warping it into a twisted, entertaining, and amusing adult fantasy storyline. His first series, the Jig the Goblin Trilogy (Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, and Goblin War), took traditional roleplaying game fantasy clichés – complete with a dwarf who is obsessed with mapping out the dungeon the protagonists are crawling – and turns it on its ear by making a goblin the hero of the series.

In his Princess Novels, he has taken the three classic princesses of fairy tales – Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty – and turned them into a trio of bad-ass fantasy heroines. (You may insert your own Charlie’s Angels comparison here.)

Snow and Talia (i.e. Sleeping Beauty) are living in exile, serving Queen Beatrice – the mother of Cinderella’s prince charming, Armand – as a sort of secret agent squad. Snow is a sorceress, with an emphasis on mirror-based magic. Talia is basically a weapon expert and all-around combat machine.

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E. E. Knight Reviews The Stepsister Scheme

E. E. Knight Reviews The Stepsister Scheme

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the-stepsister-schemeThe Stepsister Scheme
Jim C. Hines
Daw (344 pp, $7.99, January 2009)
Reviewed by E.E. Knight

Jim C. Hines has penned a worthy follow-up to his Jig the Goblin books, a delightfully funny series that established Hines as the go-to guy for humorous fantasy between Pratchett publication dates.
Jig was short on size and muscle but long on moxie and chutzpah. Hines has glammed up his protagonists for this new series, taking on one of the most popular public domain franchises (thanks to Walt Disney): Fairy Tale Princesses, cleverly mashing them up with a Charlie’s Angels-style setup.

Sleeping Beauty (“Talia”) is more or less the leader, Snow White (“Snow”), the series sexpot and owner of some handy mirror-magic, and Cinderella (“Danielle”) is the bride with the kidnapped Prince and husband who needs rescuing. During her quest Danielle discovers her own power (no fear, it is delightfully Disneyesque) as she risks all to return her bridegroom Prince Armand to her bedchamber and his position as future heir to the Kingdom of Lorindar, currently under Queen Beatrice. Queen “Bea” is the royal voice dispatching the gals on their assignments, sometimes contracted through Snow’s magic mirror.
The Stepsister Scheme is a blend of Maguire’s Oz updates, Shrek’s madcap fairy tales, and gal detective stories.

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