Do you like psychology? Then you’ll like this novella.
My god, it’s very rare that I find such a mind-puzzle among the books I buy on Amazon. This time I wanted to read a dark academia with a queer element, and while the queerness is not really front and center, this story completely blew me away with its many threads.
It’s about Annae, who has broken up with her former boyfriend/tutor, and moved from America to England, away from his emotional abuse. She’s also a magician, a magic user, who’s interested in removing mental illness and trauma from the human brain. The other main character is Marec Gorski, her new mentor, who is famous for being difficult and unapproachable.
The thing is, even though it’s a short book, we’re delving deep into those two people’s lives and traumas through the course of it. I don’t know how the author did it, but it’s a sublimely genius work of fiction. At first it was slow going, but the more I read, the more amazed I became at the subtext and subplots, and the twists and turns of the story. It’s amazing!
Basically, the idea is that a magician can create something called a homunculus, which is another person who is a part of you, but the parts you decide you don’t want. For most people, those are the bad parts, but it can be anything. Marec decided long ago to create Ariel, to remove the parts that distract him from focusing on his work, and ended up severing himself into two people. The long-standing consequences of this are dire, as you can imagine. Normal people, when we don’t have magic, we just push certain traits down or put on a mask. But a magician can literally remove the parts they don’t want and create a whole new person, making themselves less than whole.
This is a fascinating idea!
On top of that, we have Annae, who can read minds – just slip into a mind – and she does it because of the trauma she went through with her ex. Those glimpses into other people were also fascinating, and we see how it’s not really great to do that at all. I felt like the whole story was a study in what NOT TO DO if you could use magic, and why. The consequences of such things are always worse than the advantages. It was fascinating to see all that in the actual physical world, not just in a person’s mind. It’s like the author took mental illness and trauma, and they created real beings and real events from those things, and the result is this little book.
I have to admit, I didn’t get it at first, but by the end, I believe this is one of the best books I have read. Mostly because I’m a psychologist and everything that has to do with the human psyche fascinates me. A word of caution, though, it is quite heavy. I felt a weight on my chest the whole time I read it, which I normally don’t like when reading, but this time I soldiered through it, and I don’t regret it. The end did not disappoint. It both made me cry and made me smile.
It’s not a light read, and it’s not the usual hero story, but it’s so very important. If you ever wanted to really think about mental health/illness and see it magically manifested in the world, read this book.
-Reviewed by Violeta Nedkova
