Hello to Part 3 of the Control Point diaries. I’ve reached chapter 13 and I thought we should have a closer look at the magic of the book today. (Without spoiling the plot…it’s gonna be tough but I am trying nevertheless.) While reading the book you – in case you are a little nerd yourself- definitely know that the description of Myke Cole at the end of the book is sooooooooooo true. Especially the part about Dungeons and Dragons. I don’t know who of you have already played role playing games – either the videogame version or the good old pen and paper games – but you usually find most parts of the magic featured in the Shadow Ops series there, too. When you find you party in the games you usually combine warriors, thieves and magicians – healers, elemental wizards, black mages etc. They’ve got different names in the book, featuring the Latin/Greek forms, but if you’re a role player you definitely recognize members of magical schools you’d totally want to recruit for your own team. (for the videogame fans here: Somehow Control Point reminds me on a Final Fantasy 8 for the generation 30+ – soldiers who kick ass and have magical abilities.)
I remember one of my first pen and paper adventures. I was playing an orphaned elf black mage, level two and not the most charming person in the party. But the most clumsy one, mind you. So my black mage tried a summoning which was only supposed spy on a village but turned out to be a level 19 demon that I had no control of whatsoever. (the clumsiness!) Yes, I did manage to wipe out my entire party before the adventure could really start.
And that is where we come back to the book. Here,too, the characters first of all have to learn how to even use and control their magic before they accidently make something go kawoom or everyone gets killed in action. So the reader gets a live in-view into the world of magic, its development and its connection to the person carrying it which brings us closer to each character. Shall we bet that at the end of the book we’ll see some great magical firework? 😉
So yeah, the idea of magic might be an old one – after all you find the stories and sagas about magic in every culture on this planet, every country has their own stories about ghosts, mages, gods and magical items, but its set into a new context. While D&D is set in more medieval world and most fantasy roleplay games are set in a world hardly comparable to the one we live in right now (they are usually on another planet or at least somewhere in the past or the idea of a future), Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops series plays in world we can very well relate to. We see the news each day – countries fighting or threating each other, people not going with the system, people easily stereotyped. The thing that divides the book from our world is the featured magic. And that’s one of the reasons why you MUST read it. It’s not only a first hand experience of a soldier’s life (which the author can tell you a lot about!), it’s the perfect combination of the world we know with a world we love to imagine in movies, games and stories, the magical realm.
On a sidenote: Oscar Britton (see entry 2) really kicks ass!I like how you are allowed to know what he feels and thinks and how he stands in for others because he hasn’t switched off his brains and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong, even if there is a system that tries to put a collar around his neck.
Sephiroth Crescent's Library 