Customer Reviews

Digital Magic

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's the late 21st century, and things aren't good. Advances in genetic engineering and neurosurgery have yielded plagues, eternal beauty and artificial longevity for the rich, and cyberpunk netunning avatars. Wars are fought for precious natural resources and small countries are suddenly bereft of protectors and must unleash nightmares to protect themselves. The world seems bent upon self-destruction, dying by its own foolish hands... and yet --

There is magic in the air.

In New Zealand, a child rescues her village from a murderous war robot with help from the Elder Folk -- for a price. In an England nearly covered with the sprawl of city, cybernet, and decay, an intrepid hacker and daring thief discover a new Art, a Digital Magic.

Phillippa Ballantine's sequel to her award-winning novel "Chasing the Bard" is unexpected, refreshing, surprising, and masterfully crafted as she weaves together many diverse threads into a stunning mixture of post-modern science fiction, high fantasy, and just plain fine writing.

Don't miss it.

If William Gibson suddenly decided to create a D&D-style universe something like Digital Magic might pop up, but it would definitely not be as good as "Digital Magic". In this book Pip Ballantine blends Cyberpunk and Fantasy so perfectly that you are left wondering why the two genres have been ever separated. The story grips you from the first page to the last. Whether you are a fan of Fantasy, of Cyberpunk or (as in my case) of both genres you will definitely enjoy this book.

Even though this is a sequel to Pip's previous book, Chasing the Bard, it is not required reading to enjoy "Digital Magic". However, it is also a great book and will fill in the backstory and increase your enjoyment of this book tremendously.

The only reason I don't give this book 6 stars is because Amazon's rating system only goes up to 5.

I never thought anybody would top Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic, and especially not a Librarian from Wellington NZ. Ballantine drops us into a world that is just as dark as Gibson's but unlike Gibson, She allows us to hope. It's almost like she has dropped Spenser's Faery Queen, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic in a blender and created a giant Slushy of reading goodness.

Throughout the book, you are following two stories on opposite sides of the world, a world where, in order to protect itself, an entire country releases a virus into the water that will kill anyone not vaccinated against it. A world where the corps rule the world, and the only magic to be had is in the 'Line' a sort of full time full body internet. A world where the difference between the haves and the have nots is even greater than the world we live in now.

How these two stories finally intersect and the Magic that only Ballantine can bring to a world so dark will amaze you.

It is a must read. You don't have to have read Chasing the Bard, but then, the Bard has Shakespeare in it, so how can you pass it up. I know. Buy them Both!

Pip Ballantine set the bar high with Chasing the Bard. This challenged her, I think, especially as she sought to take that world into a science fiction future. I had a hard time getting into the story through the first half of the book. While I could see some connection to characters in Chasing the Bard, I had a hard time understanding the relations and that kept me out of the story a bit.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, but these seem disjointed and incoherent, even though I knew that the story had a mystery behind it and as happens with good mysteries, the threads of the story would come together by the climax. '

Ballantine presented herself with the heavy challenge of setting the story far enough in the future that she had new technologies and even social settings and interactions to explain; I had a hard time understanding these references and the relations to the story and the individual characters. By the second half of the book, however, the settings became familiar and I could stay immersed in the story much better.

Similarly, the characters and relations to Chasing the Bard really shined in the second half of the book and I became engrossed in the tale. In the last few chapters, I couldn't stop turning the pages or finding out how each heavy plot twist would be resolved.

I had a hard time getting into Digital Magic, but I was extremely happy I stuck with it and finished it out. I think it lacked some of the wonderful heroism, love, and magic of Chasing the Bard, but Digital Magic was still a good read.

I don't often use the word "Delight" to describe literature. I usually enjoy books and I occasionally love one, but rarely does a story so captivate me that it transcends to something special.

Digital Magic is such a story.

The characters are deep and interesting. The settings are detailed and rich, poetic, but don't overwhelm. The plot contained enough twists and turns to keep me spellbound for the entire read. Often books contain one or two of these elements but rarely all three. Philippa Ballantine manages to deftly weave all three together into something special.

The book has dark moments that are not shied away from or minimized, but these only make the story stronger; they are not gratuitous but give the characters reason to exist and struggle. The antagonists are as deep as the heroes and keep you constantly guessing.

Would I recommend this book? Without reservation! As I said before, the book is a delight and I already have given it to my daughter who I know will love it as much as I did.

Philippa Ballantine's latest book is a marvelous blend of high-tech and high fantasy set in a dystopian future reminiscent of that in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" or Philip K. Dick's "Blade Runner."

The Realms [the Human, the Fey & the Shattered] were driven apart long ago, and remembrance has faded into myth & folklore. Some of the Fey still linger here, hidden, fading into history or blending into humanity with the old ways nearly lost. Humanity's power is growing and the danger posed by technology & greed threatens everything.

To the surprise of all, Magic is beginning to return to the world.

Fantastic creatures walk the land, bringing hope, wonder and terror. Their return triggering a deadly struggle for supremacy. The fate of all three Realms hangs in the balance.

This is a fresh approach to the blending of science fiction & fantasy, a story not to be missed. Come, you might just view the world with new eyes.

Let's misquote Tony Stark, shall we? "Some ask: Which is better, science fiction, or fantasy? I say: Is it too much to ask for both?"

In my experience, the number of authors who could successfully combine a fantasy tale with elements of science fiction could be counted on the fingers of one pseudopod. Fantasy, as a general rule, has been set either in the modern world, in Earth's past, or in a constructed world whose closest analogue is medieval Europe. Put your story in the future--or let the reader catch a glimpse of a laser pistol, a nanomachine, or a global cybernetic system--and will-we-nill-we the story is grabbed from behind and the brand "science fiction" seared into its breast. (Two would-be exceptions demonstrate the rule: Fred Saberhagen's classic Empire of the East, which stated or assumed a technological basis for its fantasy elements, and the magnificent work of Cordwainer Smith--e.g., The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith--which apparently will never shake off the "science fiction" label despite its fantasy roots and style.)

Rules, they say, were made to be broken--but this one has stood inviolate.

Until now.

In her earlier novel Chasing the Bard, Philippa Ballantine set forth the tripartite nature of the universe. Besides the realm of Mortals, there are the Shattered Realm, prison of the Unmaker (an issue addressed in that novel), and the realm of the Fey, which anyone who's seen or read Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream knows. The Fey are the basis for all the ancient pantheons. These are no von-Danikenesque "alien astronauts," but the mystical Folk whose numbers have included Oberon (or *ahem* Auberon), Sive the Shining, Brigit, Anu, and perhaps the most famous of them all, Puck the Trickster. And theirs is not the Clarke-Sturgeon "sufficiently advanced technology ... indistinguishable from magic"; it IS magic, pure and powerful.

Now Ms. Ballantine shows us a time not many years from now, when our realm is sundered from the other two. The magic of the Fey has departed, and our world is the worse for it. But a very few of the Folk made their way to our realm prior to the schism centuries ago. Some inhabit the mountains of New Zealand, which is now isolated from the rest of the world by biological warfare; one lives in London. But they are not alone. Not only are they and human society threatened by the maneuverings of mortal men, but a child of the Shattered Realm has also appeared on this earth. It has human allies. And its intentions are most definitely not friendly.

If you enjoy an engaging, well-told story, enriched by the admixing of elements from different cultures and lores (notably those of Ms. Ballantine's native New Zealand) into a setting of conspiracy, cybertech, and cloak-and-splintergun intrigue, you'll find DIGITAL MAGIC a feast. And if our current world and its cyberpunk extrapolations strike you as somewhat impoverished, you may well hear your own voice echoing through this tale. Its world hungers for magic--but, as with fantasy amid science-fiction staging, it seems magic cannot live in a world of machines and electronics, where heart is replaced with calculation, scrolls with liquid-crystal displays, and incantations with numbers.

...Or can't it?

There is only one word that works for Philippa Balantine's Digital Magic. It's one I've used a lot lately. MINDF***! It's a complete and total mindf*** and it doesn't get any better than this.

Knowing this story took place much later than Chasing the Bard I could only hope it would repair my feelings about the end of the first book. It not only repaired them, it blew me away. The writing is tight and wraps you up in a world that is half D&D and half Cyberpunk.

What I found enjoyable about it is that you don't have to have read Chasing the Bard first. You can read this then go back to the original. Things in Chasing the Bard just might make more sense if you read Digital Magic first, but that's just my two cents. Still, no matter how you slice it, Digital Magic is a fantastic book for fantasy readers.

Digital Magic, the follow-up to Chasing the Bard, is a very good story in its own right, with a great twist at the end that I didn't see coming. Very well written, with a great, smooth feel to it.

It is not, however much I try to make it feel that way, a sequel. There is one returning character, but even the feel of the character is extremely different (to be expected, considering the character's development over 300+ years). To be honest, I had a hard time matching up the two books at all- they just had too many elements to them that weren't even similar. I also had a bit of a hard time imagining some of the futuristic elements of the story, and didn't see some of the character development I would normally see from Pip's stories. I would have loved to have seen more from it, as there were several pieces that just didn't feel fleshed out- dangling tendrils that were left hanging. The best-fleshed character is Ahohra, the little girl, although I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she had to do with anything until nearly the end-and how does the story of her nana match up with what was told in The Bard?- we didn't get ANY of that story. The villian even felt a little bit flat, none of the full-fledged majesty that was there in Chasing the Bard.

Otherwise, I absolutely loved the book and the story. Being transported to another place and time, but just real enough to feel like it could be happening now. Phillipa Ballantine is a very good author, and I highly recommend her works.

A war over water... in New Zealand. Internet technology kicked to the next level with implanted I/O sockets. A tourist attraction in the middle of England with more secrets than anyone knows. And a memorable cast of characters, who usually aren't what we think they are. To say Philippa Ballantine's book Digital Magic is subtextual is putting it mildly. And I absolutely loved it.

Readers of Ballantine's previous work, Chasing the Bard, will recognize one major character right away, even though he's not using the same name anymore. He's a thief now, and right away we see that this book is about seeing what lies below the surface as he finds an antique mask that has something different about it. Something that reminds him of home, the home he left at the end of Chasing the Bard.

I actually started reading this book before I'd even started Chasing the Bard. After about ten pages, though, I knew I had to get the backstory. Chasing the Bard is still available as a podcast novel, or as a regular-format book at Amazon.com. I think you'll still enjoy this book if you haven't read Chasing the Bard, but parts will make much more sense if you have. It may answer a question or two as well (it did for me). And of course, the ending is satisfying, while leaving open the possibility (demand?) for a sequel.

The book is a "near future" type of science fiction/fantasy novel -- its setting is certainly in the future, but not so far in the future that it was totally unbelievable. There's plenty of magic in the book, but a fair amount of it is certainly digital magic -- magic that's made by technology. And it's interesting to see some old familiar characters interact with that technology.

The descriptions in Digital Magic transport the reader in time and space; Ballantine does an excellent job, her strengths seem to be in knowing what to spend time describing, and what not to. Many writers have the former down pat, but struggle mightily with the latter. The characters are well written and believable, as they were in Chasing the Bard. Digital Magic is a wonderful book, but you won't read this one as quickly as some others. Ballantine repeatedly has readers stopping to ponder what they've just read, trying to find out exactly what's going on. And trust me -- you won't find out until the last chapter or two. Promise. But the wait and the patience are worth it. This isn't a beach book, but it's certainly a great book to curl up with on a rainy day, or even a sunny one.