Sharon Shinn, The Shape-Changers Wife

I first read Sharon Shinn years ago, it was a beautiful hybrid of fantasy and science fiction called Archangel and I enjoyed it a lot. This novel, or maybe novella, is short, powerful and packs a punch. The story is at the same time simple and complex. A young wizard who apprentices with an older wizard, learns from him, then defeats him and his evil spells at the end. But it builds up a structured story and cast that asks important questions about morality, ethics, good and evil in a deeply compelling and engaging way. Perhaps the most obvious question is "If you have the power to change something, do you have the right?" which is a question that we ask daily when faced with the fruits of modern wizardry, and Sharon Shinn has an answer that rings as true for the scientist toiling in the lab, as the young wizard struggling with a troubled heart.

"I came to magic." He said at last. "With joy. I thought it was a splendid thing to take the well of power that I found within me and shape it to marvelous uses. I learned to call up wind and control fire, to draw flowers from barren soil and divert rain to the desert. I learned to exorcise madness from men's brains and to banish illness from their blood. I can create illusions, I can make a scrying crystal give me visions that are literal, that are true. And everything I learned made me happy- made others happy. And that is what I learned magic for.

"But magic, I have discovered, is like any other skill. It is not inherently good in itself. And some of it- yes some of it is inherently evil. There are wicked spells, savage spells, enchantments that are so black that even to know them withers the heart just a little, taints the soul. And yet to be a great magician, to be a sorcerer of any ability or reknown, those spells must be learned as well. For if a magician does not know them, they can be used against him- and what is magic after all, but a man's power to change the world while it is incapable of changing him?"

The difference between the magic of tales and the magic we wield daily, is that we do so in an ignorance not suffered by Aubrey. For no single man or woman is a magician in the modern world, and it is perhaps in our collective knowledge and lack of that many evils lie.

A great read and one I will pick up again in the future.