Bull Spec #7 - Sample

Bull Spec #7 Dragon is so disjointed as to appear to have been dismembered.” ful ends, and magic is a means to power, and so mephitic that it Other reviewers had a similar reaction to my own: in his Strange corrupts the bodies of the descendents of magical creatures such Horizons review, Michael Levy ended his laudatory review with the as demons and they become vessels for spreading that corruption. observation that “[e]arly in Last Dragon, I found myself often conContagion is a problem of living in many of McDermott’s stofused, even loundering. If I hadn’t been assigned to review the book, ries, through disease, magic, or even assumptions and ideas. In fact, I might not have inished it. But I’m very glad I did.” his quality experiences are often iltered through the taint of what is passed to also emerges from McDermott’s other work: a feeling of bewildera person, whether it is a heady thing such as love or destiny, or the ment, of dislocation and discord, a jarring of the reader’s perspeceveryday happenstance of contact that changes how a character sees tive. Regardless of a given work’s length, there is (almost) always themselves, or how others see them. Addiction to behavior is as powa brief instance of shock as you begin to read a piece of McDererful as any narcotic or spell and overwhelms people just as wholly. mott’s iction, and you often wonder where the story is going. his he struggle to normalize, ameliorate, or at least learn to live with is the irst clue to the power and depth that his writing contains. contagion and addiction is a diiculty that alicts everyone in these here are, to me, three primary elements that make McDermott’s stories. he many alictions that life passes on to them blights how iction both noteworthy and satpeople apprehend and tell their isfying: an exegesis of the processown stories and see the world ing of experience, of the inherent around them. problems of life; a constant, unZhan’s wandering autobioglinching unraveling of the laws raphy in Last Dragon is the best and unfairness of one’s place in example of this, as she struggles the world; and a devastating comnot only with memory but with mand not just of detail but of an the present, as she tries incomeconomy of words that makes pletely to understand her life. his stories and worlds exceed She is not just befuddled by age, the edict of making a tale “come but by habit and the encrustaalive.” Rather, McDermott chaltion of her story with the dried lenges the reader’s idea of lived exblood of sacriice and the pus of perience, of memory, and of how untended emotional wounds. we look at our lives as they unfold Zhan tries to not just make sense and how we make sense of them of her life, but alter it, and pull later. While it is easy to classify into it people and moments that McDermott’s writing as “diiwill give her comfort, even as she cult”, it is precisely the diiculties torments herself over failures and it creates that draw the reader in losses. She is addicted to the telland make his stories inhabit your ing of her story, and corrupted mind. As a reviewer for the blog by it. he struggle here is not to “he Spiral” put it: “[t]he only remember, but to break out of thing diicult about it is that evthe web of memory and escape ery sentence, every word, carries the rapacious predations of the weight.” he diiculty of making actual and the just-so, to shake sense of life, in many forms, is of memory and ind a place of the struggle within his stories and respite from it. But Zhan is too their telling, and the reader must entwined with her past, too destruggle along with the characters. pendent on telling it and mistelhe kinds of struggles that ling it, and she is trapped by it. underlie McDermott’s iction McDermott’s stories unfold are not arcane, even if they do not as webs, not as complacently take place in worlds that are inprogressive plots, but as accumufected with magic and/or very lations, torn away from comfortWhen We Were Executioners by J.M. McDermott diferent than our own. I use able rituals and expectations of Night Shade Books, February 2012 “infected” quite intentionally, benarration (with the exception of cause magic is rarely a wondrous, life-airming power in his worlds.

“Death Mask and Eulogy” which has a remarkably standard thirdhose who use magic seem to only abuse it, whether they are creatperson point of view) so that the reader must scrutinize not just the ing monstrosities like Lord Sabachthani’s guardians in Never Knew story but their own process of reading. he reader has to continually Another, corpse-hunting wizards in “Death Mask and Eulogy”, or ask why a moment is being described, what the purpose of a statethe ensorcelling of a young woman in “Korey”. Magic imprisons ment or observation is. Why does he choose to tell us what he tells ghosts into powerlines and disrupts life in “Io”, and even Rachel us? Why do the narrators? We scramble like the ants that cover the Nolander’s pragmatic use of Senta koans in the Dogsland books pages of Last Dragon to decide what morsels are worth the efort has the implication of misuse, of not understanding what magic is. of collecting and digesting; McDermott grants the reader some auPower in these stories is frequently appropriated for petty or awtonomy even as he carefully decides what she should know.

49