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Was trying to characterize to myself why I love Caroline Stevermer’s A Scholar of Magics. And, for that matter, its predecessor, which I thoroughly enjoyed rereading before I picked up this one.

I find it hard to articulate why certain books give me pleasure, without resorting to annoying superlatives (too much like the friend who, in trying to get you to love their favorite rock group, keeps turning up the volume, sure that that will suddenly convince you) or falling back on the helpless hand wave and “It’s just, you know, like, really good.”

Has anyone else that sense with some books, that it is their book? I can admire a variety of books. Some I’ll never read again—one experience was enough—though I came away impressed by many aspects of what is highly regarded in most circles as a brilliant book. Some I reread all the time, and yet to characterize this one as a comfort book doesn’t quite seem to fit, either. The emotional payoff of a comfort book is usually its highest charm, and the emotional payoff here is actually quite modest, deferring to the intellectual payoff, surrounded by, oh, sparks and sunlit shards of the numinous.

I love the characters, with their quiet observance of beauty, their appreciation of not just books and conversation but food and the sky and music and the passing absurdities of the world. I would love to spend time with these characters.

I love how the colleges evoke the complete life of the mind. I first noticed this when reading about Greenlaw, in A College of Magics. Stevermer reminded me of writings from medieval nuns, from various women who had found a complete community with only their gender. Sex isn’t missed, or even compensated for, it’s irrelevant: the life of the intellect, and the company of other women, makes up the good life. The counterpart is here in the men’s Glasscastle College.

I love the witty asides, the references to books and music and events of the time—and the subtle ways in which some of these have changed. Like, the Titanic making yet another uneventful voyage across the ocean.

II love the magical discussions, as people work out changing paradigms, and mathematics, and how the universe works. I love the notion of the wardens, and I absolutely adored what the McGuffin of the story did. And how it was all resolved. And that the ending was not a conventional one at all, but deeply satisfying just the same.

Oh, I hope there will be more—I so want to return to that world.

Reread S&S yet again, because I can pick it up anywhere and put it down again, and once more I am reminded by how very funny the narrative voice is. I've also been reading some manga. Of them, I like Saiyuki the best so far; I've been noticing how sophisticated these things are. A whole lot of assumptions in the decoding arguing for a devoted audience.

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