Book Reviews: Elemental Logic series, Laurie J. Marks

[juushika]

Sure am still writing reviews for books I read in February/March 2020!!!! Kudos to all y'all who managed your catchups and yearly wrap-ups at the beginning January, because it's taking me an age. But let it be a message to future-Juu: I will almost definitely get to those reviews someday, so I may as well take notes for them, which I did not do for Air Logic and then came to regret. TY to this Tor write-up which goes into enough depth about both plot and themes that I could pick out which memories and reactions belonged to that book in particular.

Star ratings are always meaningless, but especially for ambitious and longer works which will almost invariably attempt some things that fail—but which can attempt so much. This series is very much a "sum greater than its parts" experience in that regard, and warrants the recurring recommendations I've seen in my reading/online environment. Reading it carried me through (*pauses to google "when did lockdown start"*) the beginning of COVID, which is part of why I didn't find the energy to review it, but what a blessing to read then: it provides the escapism of a compelling secondary world and magic system, but it recognizes, engages, but doggedly finds hope in the face of cultural trauma, which I certainly needed at the time. And now.


Title: Fire Logic (Elemental Logic Book 1)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2013 (2002)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 349,215
Text Number: 1263
Read Because: multiple recommendations, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is slow to start: the opening is long and disjointed, and finding the throughline (in the protagonist; in the setting) is a struggle. But once it gets going, it's ambitious and fascinating.

It does three things which are particularly interesting and mostly successful: 1) A trauma study that reminds me of Hartman's Tess of the Road, Cashore's Bitterblue, and Sweet's The Pattern Scars for the female protagonist and for a long, intimate, worldbuilding-engaged exploration of trauma recovery that makes a sometimes-flawed text so much greater than its limitations. (Thus it's even more disquieting that physical disability, while also present and meaningful, is given magical cures; this feels erasing and thematically discordant.) 2) Queer found family and slow-burn romance that dovetail with the above, echoing the long, slow investment in character that then supports the plot's larger issues of nations, histories, war. It feels like wish-fulfillment, but in a productive way. 3) A fascinating study of prophecy in fantasy, particularly the relationship between intuition vs./as prophetic insight: predicting the future becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's smart, organic, and thought-provoking; so, indeed, is the entire book.



Title: Earth Logic (Elemental Logic Book 2)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2014 (2004)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 410
Total Page Count: 349,625
Text Number: 1264
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This picks up after a five-year timeskip that allows the relationships and society to progress at a reasonable pace, and it expands its focus from a central protagonist to her entire family. That feel-good core encompasses a larger and increasingly troubled/politically-ambiguous cast, building on the first book's successful balance between character-level investment and meaty worldbuilding. The magic I find less successful; it's bigger, more physical, which set against expetations built by the first book makes it feel metaphorical and thus (no pun intended) ungrounded.

But this sticks the landing—sticks it precisely when it seems it will falter: the political conflict differs from real-world analogs, and just when it seems to use its basis in fantasy to perpetuate tired equivalencies between the violence of oppressor and oppressed, it instead makes vocal, necessary space for anger and reparation. This series is good—not flawless, but it successfully balances its narrative elements and it approaches its themes with a persistent, thoughtful nuance. I may not have loved this as much as Fire Logic, but it's still satisfying.


Title: Water Logic (Elemental Logic Book 3)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2007
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 330
Total Page Count: 349,955+400
Text Number: 1265
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A weak book in a strong series. It interweaves three plotlines in gimmicky, cliffhangery ways, and there's enough mirroring across plotlines to render the cliffhangers virtually interchangeable. I also continue to struggle with the elemental magics, which are increasingly concrete despite their figurative roots in the first book—and by this point that means literal time travel. In retrospect, I think it works: by the end of the series, the various branches of magic (and relationships between them) span figurative to literal, delineated to intuitive, creating a dynamic whole. I wonder if that impression will carry through to rereads and inform my future reactions to this book.

The overall strengths of the series persist, in particular its gradually expanding cast and scale underpinned by strong emotional investment. I particularly appreciate the ongoing insistence on cost (albeit continually undermined by the uncomfortable role of magical healing): the personal is political, and vice versa.


Title: Air Logic (Elemental Logic Book 4)
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Published: Small Beer Press, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 350,355
Text Number: 1266
Read Because: reading the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A satisfying book, which is a running theme of this series and especially important in the finale. And if some elements of the resolution are transparently satisfying and borderline feel-good, then it's earned that—in no small part because the journey there isn't easy. This is as plotty as Water Logic, but, though some plots spin sideways, better avoids narrative repetition. Reveals are rendered effective and antagonist characterization (particularly difficult with an evil mastermind) succeed based on the novel's central strength:

Air magic is beautifully realized. It meets the first and middle books halfway: as distinctly a personality, aptitude, and worldview as fire magic, but concrete and non-metaphorical in a way that encompasses the showy magic of earth and water. It makes the middle books more successful in retrospect and sells this book's plot. The personality-typing aspect of the magic system is linked to theme throughout the series, illustrating the diverse experiences of and solutions to cultural trauma; that air's logic creates conflicting but equally absolute worldviews epitomizes this and forces the resolution to find difficult solutions to complex problems. None of the sequels captured me in the same striking way as the first book, but the finale comes close to bringing things full circle—and what it encircles is original, thoughtful, indomitably nuanced, and hopeful. That outweighs intervening weaknesses.

Comments

[phoenixfalls]

I, too, adored Fire Logic, but when I read it and Earth Logic the last two books hadn't been written and in fact seemed like they might not ever be written, so the series fell off my radar. I didn't realize that it had been completed!

Very happy to hear Air Logic sticks the landing; the "ongoing insistence on cost" and focus on how "the personal is political, and vice versa," are themes I adore and which I find too rarely in my reading.

[oracne]

I love these books. I really need to read all four in a row, instead of separated by years.

[starshipfox]

It's interesting that you had trouble with Water Logic -- I've had a copy of it since April, but I haven't been able to concentrate on it properly. I wonder if it's because the writing is more gimmicky and disjointed than in other books. I'm glad to hear Air Logic is so satisfying though -- I'll have to keep pushing through with it!

[chthonic_cassandra]

I have been so delighted to see that you were reading these books! They are very special to me, and it's been a joy to read your thoughts on them.

I very much agree about the series being a "whole greater than the sum of its parts" situation, and I had that reaction very strongly when I reread the first three and then read Air Logic for the first time.

My own journey with the series was very disjointed - I read Fire Logic a very long time ago (probably soon after it came out?), and at the time it was revelatory to me just for having a trauma narrative + queer romances, but then I didn't find Earth Logic and Water Logic until (Goodreads tells me) 2014. Earth Logic has always been my personal favorite both because of the way the Clement and Garland plot lines unfold, and also because of Zanja's sacrifice, which resonates very much with me personally in ways that have been usefully clarifying (as really has the whole category of fire logic itself, which I identify strongly with, though I think I have a generous helping of air also).

Water Logic didn't work so well for me (though my partner adored it) until I reread it in context with the others, and with Air Logic following - it's still my least favorite, but I appreciate it much more now, and love a lot of parts of it. I think the series as a whole just has such a beautiful, rich shape. I'm looking forward to rereading it all again when I have just enough distance for some of the details to become hazy again.

[juushika]

"Beautiful, rich shape" is exactly right. It's an obscure thing to reference, but a number of years ago rushthatspeaks made this post about rereading George R.R. Martin and about seeing the shape of stories:

But M. John Harrison has also taught me something, namely that while I love it beyond reason when people write things aimed at a primarily structural reader such as myself, it's just as possible to lose your audience of other kinds of readers when you're doing that as it is if you're writing primarily for, say, kinesthetics. I know this because when I talk about M. John Harrison, and when I read essays that other critics write about his stuff, those critics, and the people I talk with on panels, and the friends I talk to about books over lunch (except a couple who are also structural readers), well, we are pretty much literally not talking about the same books. And when I say we aren't talking about the same books, I mean that the plots are not the same. Characters do not act for the same reasons. Different stuff mattered. We both read the same text, but. It's that big a gap. I feel a little weird about which side of that gap I'm on, too, because I'm the lucky one: I have never read an M. John Harrison novel which did not have an ecstatically happy ending. Granted I haven't read all of them. But, for me, he is one of the great masters of the eucatastrophe, and when I say that to people, they say well what about xyz event which happened which was really bleak, and I'll say yes, that happened, certainly, but it doesn't matter because the weight of the book comes down on this other thing over here which invalidates that because of the thread leading back to... and by this time I am gesturing with my hands in midair trying to show the shape of an imaginary glass object which represents my visualization of the book, and saying helplessly that I know it has to be intentional on his part or he wouldn't have used the metaphor about waves and wings on p. 217.

Which isn't the type of reader I am, really; I tend to see that sort of shaping in a structural, technical, even tropey way. But it pops into my head all the time as a way of conceptualizing a work, and as a reminder that the structural and technical elements create something. That isn't quite what's going on here with the Elemental Logic series but it also sort of is: the shape of the books & series entire is larger and more meaningful than the technical elements which sometimes stumble and which I generally find easier to pinpoint.

Anyway, it was just an overlap of word choice that resonated with me! I saw recurring recommendations for this series in the specific circle of readers I follow, but it was largely yours that spurned me to actually pick up the thing, so thank you for that.