The magic system of Breach should entice fantasy fans

W.L. Goodwater’s debut novel has a good enough system of magic that even the occasional excessive flourish shouldn’t deter readers.

Historical wars, but with magic involved, feel like they should be their own subgenre at this point, somewhere in the great tent that is fantasy as a whole. But W.L. Goodwater’s debut, Breach, is technically not about a war. It’s about the aftermath of one, and about a very different Berlin Wall than what we’re used to, because this Wall is magic.

The first in what’s being called the Cold War Magic series (so, okay, technically a war) sees Berlin 10 years into the Cold War, still divided between French, Russians, Americans, and Brits, with East Germany still in play as well; with the Wall slowly being eroded, the CIA calls in magician Karen O’Neil to try and ascertain what’s going on.

But even though there are magicians, research into magic, and so on, Goodwater makes the point that most magic is not quite understood — in the sense that there isn’t really a lot of room to go beyond using a locus or ancient spells. Sure, Karen starts the book out as a researcher trying to figure out healing, but she went through the same processes of learning attack magic and finding her locus and whatnot. Granted, Goodwater does hint at and show that there are possibilities beyond what’s already known, but he seems to be treating them as a (rather obvious) allegory to nuclear weaponry in the actual Cold War.

This reviewer will give him credit, though, for actually working within the system to come up with the twist, alluded to in the book’s description: what the true purpose of the Wall is. This leads into the other part of the book, which is much more of a spy novel that is reasonably realistic (for fiction) about what spying actually entails. Ultimately, the two genres make for a good match, with secrets dominating both.

What ends up being the most obvious issue is perhaps a little lack of editing on Goodwater’s part. Described more effectively, it almost seems like a need to bring in rhetorical flourishes frequently, especially in the early going of the novel. It’s unclear whether or not this is meant to actually entice the reader more, but they end up being a bit too clunky. (Check the introduction to Arthur for a good example of this, just into the very first chapter.) Fortunately, they die down in the later going, making room for some starkly effective prose.

Although Goodwater does write Karen pretty effectively as a character (no constant descriptions of her figure), some of his attempts to deal with the sexism that she experiences feel a little clumsily executed. Because she’s one of the few named women in the entire novel and a main character to boot, it sticks out significantly. It also seems perhaps mildly not well-thought-through that Karen’s main research point is actually healing — if only because women are stereotypically the healer characters in fiction.

All in all, though, this is a generally promising first novel, with some things to be worked out going forward.