Book Review: Index: The Mages

Index: The Mages, buy it now.

The Index: Mages is the first novel by author Katherine Gilraine.  It is a fantasy novel that includes wars and fight scenes and plenty of people with cool powers trying to blow up stuff.  There is also character development, interesting interpersonal relationships, and a carefully-drawn plot that will surprise you with its occasional left turns.

Gilraine hooks you in from the very first page, opening the story on a post-battlefield world that has been decimated by an intergalactic war.  The main characters are then sent out to recuperate from their experiences, and they end up on Earth.  When the story picks up again, it’s modern-day New York and everything’s just gone sideways.  The man responsible for the intergalactic war has gotten loose, and there’s precious little time to save Earth, its people and maybe even a good chunk of the universe.  Saving a piece of the universe is a tall order for a first novel, and Gilraine fills it well.  Her characters hit the ground running and fighting, and you’re taken along for the chase.  One skirmish has barely finished before another starts to flare up, and Gilraine’s writing style—brief descriptions and snappish dialogue—keeps the up the pace without losing the punch.

A good plot is incredibly weak without well-drawn characters, and it’s clear Gilraine is well aware of that fact.  She uses the events in the plot to showcase each of her characters individually, and that allows her to branch out her story and give a complete, complex narrative that showcases soldiers trying to do their duty, families trying to find out the truth about their loved ones, and friends working hard to help each other through a sudden change in events that leaves them all confused when they have time to think through everything.  Gilraine’s main characters are aliens from a world where magic is commonplace, but they’re wholly relatable in their actions, even when their response to being furious is accidentally setting a hall of portraits aflame.  Metaphor is an effective tool in style when a writer knows how to manipulate it, and Gilraine knows what she’s doing.

The Index: Mages is not just a first novel; it’s the first novel in a series.  Gilraine finishes her fine work with a cliffhanger that should get an award for not being set directly before any major battle, not being set in the middle of any major battle, and not being set just as the good guy and the bad guy finally face off for the first time (an overdone series of tropes used by plenty of adventure fantasy novelists).  It’s obvious she knows where she’s going with the rest of her series.  The first book is a double winner:  It’s a well-constructed set-up into the universe Gilraine wants us to see, and it’s a strong story with an engaging plot and interesting characters.  On the basis of her first novel, I look eagerly forward to what else Gilraine has planned for her universe.

It is now craft and book time.

My internship is over!  I have won the internets.  And time to do things that are not my internship.  First and foremost, I’ve been reading.  In the last couple of weeks I’ve polished off Animal Farm, The Poisonwood Bible, and Eighty Million Eyes.  The last is one of Ed McBain’s 87th Pricinct novels.  I adore that series.  Animal Farm and The Poisonwood Bible were both re-reads.  I last read Animal Farm when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I was very pleased to find out that the story is still compelling.  One of my favorite things about it is that while it’s a fairy tale about how totalitarinism is bad, it’s also just a very good story.  Orwell gets the point across without beating you over the head with a slideshow.  I think this was my ninth or tenth re-read of The Poisonwood Bilble [by Barabara Kingsolover, if you’ve not heard of it].  I read it about once a year, and I plan for it because I know that picking it up just to check one piece of information means sitting down and reading it yet again.  And now I’ve started The Scarlet Letter. I’ve never read it, and I’m trying to read more classics because I just never have.  There were plenty of modern books to take up my time in school, so I never thought to pick up the old books.

In craft news, have I shown you these adorable shoes:

$20 heels and purple yarn for the win!

It took a little mod podge, a little yarn, and a great deal of patience to get these shoes.  I finished them way back but completely forgot to post the picture.  The only downside to having cute, fuzzy purple shoes is that I am now out of cute, low-heeled black shoes.  Whoops.  Oh, well.  I have cute, high-heeled black shoes to tide me over as needed.

I also crocheted a shawl around that time:

Isn't my pose just saucy?

I made it with a D-hook, some Patons Brilliance, and [again] patience.  It’s a small fuzzy yarn on a small hook, people.  It’s a squinty job.  It was a bit rough when I completed it, but I ran it through the dryer on low heat, and that softenedi t up nicely.  I was inspired courtesty of “Mad Men”, which got me looking at vintage fashion, which got me to caplets from the 1950s.  Which got me here.

A quick close-up on the button and neckline:

asymmetrical and sparkly

Pardon the weird coloration, I took this picture with my webcam.  The button is a 1 and 3/16″ diameter rounded triangle [found at Hobby Lobby], and the neckline was intentionally asymmetrical.  I was inspired by the cobweb tights that I mentioned in this post, and I think the neckline and button give the shawl a nice touch of modernism without taking away from the retro vibe.

And that’s the completed crafts.  Currently, I’m working on a Big Tacky Blanket [tm].  I’m finishing a section currently, so pictures will go up once the section is completed.  I’m also working on another mod podge project; this one a giant red bag that will be covered in comic book panels [it will character-match the shoes I made back in March].  I need to finish clearing my work table of internship debris before the bag takes off, but I’ve got a couple of weeks before semester starts to get the whole thing jazzed up and ready to go.

The Addictive Quality of Shelfari

My Shelfari page occasionally gets ignored, but I always end up back there, scurrying about to get my latest books on the list.  I’ve always been a bookworm and getting to keep track of what I read and how I liked it is an incredibly useful tool.  I can usually recall, even years later, whether or not something’s struck me as worth my time, but there are occasions where I can’t tell you if I’ve even read a book.

I also like writing reviews of books.  I’m a writer before I’m anything else of interest and having the space to practice is very nice.  I get a bit aggravated when I go looking for books to add to my ‘will read’ list and the only review is a “yes”, “no”, or something resembling l33t-speak.  I always hope that places like Shelfari will have a concentrated, loyal following of well-spoken people who are willing to at least attempt to write full sentences, but the internet is the internet, and sometimes well-spoken bookworms fall into a pit of exclamation points.

I also like Shelfari because it makes me stop and think exactly how much I enjoyed a book.  Did I think it was great the whole way through, or did parts of it drag?  How badly did it make me want to claw out my eyes?  How many times did I want to read parts aloud?  The secret to a good review, really, is to be willing to carve up what you love and look at its innards.