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The War that Was Fought with Magic

By Walter Donway

November 23, 2022

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Book Review: Spells of War by Gary McGath, KDP (2021)

Gary McGath is another discovery awaiting readers in the world of self-published novels. He should be more widely known and my evidence for that is his second novel, Spells of War, published this year. It is a sequel much-anticipated by those who read The Magic Battery, also reviewed here.

McGath’s approach to magic has little to do with the wizards of fantasy. Well-grounded in science, McGath treats magic as it was viewed by a man like Thomas Lorenez in sixteenth-century Saxony (later part of Germany)—as the discipline of understanding and controlling a mystery force of potentially limitless power.

Magic was real in sixteenth century Europe in the sense that it was practiced, studied, and debated.

Magic was real in sixteenth century Europe in the sense that it was practiced, studied, and debated. It had been for some centuries. But the advent of the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther upset the settled if uneasy accommodation of magic by the Catholic Church. Luther viewed it as commerce with demons, permitted to men, deemed able to control it. Women who practiced magic were condemned as witches and burned at the stake.

We know from The Magic Battery or effective flashbacks in Spells of War that Thomas Lorenz has become a celebrate mage after an apprenticeship during which he solved the problem blocking the entire advance of magic. How can magic be stored? Spells could be performed, their effects sustained while the mage exerted his power, but no longer. What could not be achieved if only that power could be stored for use anytime, anywhere? If there were a magic battery?

Lorenz’s invention, perfected step by step, defended against detractors, has transformed magic into a source of power for any application from lighting to lifting weight to motive power.

As Spells of War opens, the fate of all powerful new technologies has caught up with Lorenz. The Ottoman Empire under the historic Islamic leader of armed conquest, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, has conquered and occupied eastern Hungary. Now, vast Turkish armies threaten new invasions of the Holy Roman Empire and all Eastern Europe.

Lorenz is explaining to his wife, Frieda, that the call has come from Archduke Ferdinand to bring magic to the Christian armies that must hurl back the Turks.

Frieda, already a practitioner of magic for healing when Lorenz met her—and later rescued her at a dramatic trial for witchcraft that would have sent her to the stake—now is mother of two. Wars are dangerous. Thomas is a successful inventor of magic devices that have benefited thousands and a celebrated member of the University of Heidelberg magic faculty.

But Thomas, like others, has heard the reports of cities sacked and burned, thousands slaughtered, and the ambition of the Sultan to rule the continent. The financial rewards offered Thomas are great and so is the potential prestige for magic as savior of Europe—at a time magic is besieged by the guardians of the Reformation.

Meanwhile, reports have come from Constantinople that a student of Lorenz, a Greek named Petros Garvas, is there. He is in the hire of the Sultan, working with local mages to arm the Turk with magic.

Spells of War is the story, by our day well-known, of technologists gathered in their respective laboratories, working under relentless pressure—moral and bureaucratic—to compress complex processes of invention and testing into months or weeks. Always with the reminder that upon their success rides the fate of soldiers, armies, cities, and nations.

Thomas and two other mages, working in Vienna, are challenged to discover how to produce and store unprecedented amounts of magic—explosive amounts—in devices that can be hurled at the Turks. Accidents, failures, are inevitable and soon begin. The military bosses are polite and understanding, but over every field test (flocks of small magic-driven mechanical birds to carry payloads of magic to ignite fires or gum up battlegrounds) hangs the question: What will this do for us—now?

Already reports from the German forces are raising suspicion that the mages in Constantinople have begun to arm the Turks with magic. More mysterious are reports that one device shot at the German forces caused a mage to lose his powers—his access to what the mages call “the world behind.”

Back in Constantinople, young Petros Garvas does not enjoy tolerant supervision. The henchman of the Sultan overseeing the three mages curses them, accuses them of laziness, warns them of dire punishments, and on one occasion slaps Garvas’s face.

Here, too, there are perils of the massing of magic spells at explosive density—and the panicked haste of Garvas drives him to overdose on hashish, making things worse.

The work of both teams of mages is on display when the German forces of Archduke Ferdinand march into eastern Hungary to liberate the twin cities of Buda and Pest (later Budapest). From Constantinople come harquebuses enabled by magic to fire at unheard of speed. From Vienna come soldiers protected by magic shielding and the flocks of firebombing birds.

Thomas and his two fellow mages have accompanied the German forces. Now, the three must watch the death and destruction—soldiers and civilians pouring from the city gates with their clothes aflame, a city reduced to ashes—and wonder if the discovery of magic was for this. If they are proud that their training and talents have achieved this result (both cities are recaptured from the Turks). And if this is only the beginning—round #1—of what is to come? “The destruction of a city with fire from the sky is something that had never happened since the days of the ancient Hebrews.”

McGath’s approach to magic has little to do with the wizards of fantasy.

At the same time, the mages begin to experience the mysterious effects reported earlier of the mage who lost of powers. Huge explosive releases of magic on the battlefield start bringing them brief experiences of being cut off from “the World Behind.” And then, engaged in trying to disarm a suspicious package sent to his superior, Thomas abruptly loses all his magic. And unlike in earlier battlefield incidents, the power does not return. “His last feeling when the magical trap had struck as that the World Behind had cast him away.”

Home in Heidelberg with Frieda and his children, Thomas Lorenz—no longer of use to the army (or anyone who seeks the power of magic)—is near to despairing. Frieda, as ever, accepts this as a problem she must solve. But what is the meaning of battlefield experiences that Thomas and other mages have tried to describe? Some sense amid catastrophic releases of magic power that there is an emotion—distinctly present and urgent, but not theirs.

If the magic is from “the World Behind,” then what in that world behind might control this force—and withdraw it? This plays into the doubts and fears coming from the mages’ own consciences. Have the new terrors they introduced into war made them unworthy of “the World Behind”? Unworthy in the eyes of God?

Freida, after talking with Albrecht Ritter, Thomas’s mentor during his apprenticeship and now head of the faculty of magic at the University, defines the problem as communicating with the World Behind to discover why Thomas was deprived of his access to that world—and how he can regain it.

The reader must discover the answer, but the unresolved question is pondered today: How can we communicate with worlds as utterly unknown to us as we are to them?

McGath, as always, brings impressive analytical skills to the problem and imagination to dramatizing Frieda’s step-by-step progress—eventually joined by Thomas—in probing what lies in the World Behind. What is the “code” Feelings? Mathematics? Music?

And then, suddenly, the mystery is made infinitely more compelling when abruptly her own powers—and we soon learn all magic as practiced by anyone, anywhere in the world—vanish. “All magic on the battlefield stopped at once…” Magic is gone from the world. Why?

Can it be relevant that just at this time reports reach them from the war of escalating massive release of magic on the battlefield?

McGath has built-up for us a climax both of action and mystery. The stakes for Thomas and Frieda now are stakes for magic itself and its world of potential benefits.

Already mages are subject to attacks, verbal and physical, by those who blame them for loss of the widespread benefits magic had brought. And the guardians of the Reformation are speaking, again, of commerce with demons that now has poisoned all magic. “The issue isn’t magic but congress with demons.”

Although McGath does not make this point explicit, the new technology of magic is under attack just as technology is under attack in our day. And it is caught between demands for its benefits, condemnation of its potential for abuse, and, above all, fear of the unknown.

McGath’s book could be called science-fiction fantasy because the fantasy is powerful—informed by understanding of scientific method and uniquely imaginative application of it to make real, issues still pressing in our day. The probing of the “World Behind” becomes an experience we must share: the questions are too provocative to ignore. So, too, is the issue of scientists in the service of governments at war—never just on the side of the “good guys.”

In all that he writes, McGath has a steady compass in his passion for reason, science, and morality. And a truly welcome talent for telling a story that gives them star billing in plot, theme, characterization, historical recreation, and the suspense of battles over great stakes.

Read this book whether or not you read The Magic Battery. It’s a sure bet that you will go back and read it after you finish Spells of War.

 

 

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