Book Review: THE CUNNING MAN (2021)
In which a young man without magic becomes a student at a magical school and trouble ensues...
Full Disclosure: Author Christopher G. Nuttall has blurbed Battle for the Wastelands #2: Serpent Sword, has reviewed some of my other books, has written guest posts for my retired Blogger blog, and hosted my own guest posts. He sent me a free copy of this book and its two sequels for honest reviews; the other two will come in May and June.
Although the most well-known story set in a magical school is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, magical schools have been a fantasy sub-genre for many years. British author Christopher G. Nuttall has written much in this genre with his Schooled In Magic series, of which this novel The Cunning Man is a spinoff. Centering a new story around a side character is something I remember hearing about at a DragonCon panel long ago, so I figured the concept would be interesting…
The Plot
Adam of Beneficence works as an apothecary in a medieval-ish fantasy society that has magic. Although he is very well-educated in theoretical magic, he cannot use it himself. When the elderly wizard who serves as his master in the magicians’ guild retires and bequeaths his shop to his obnoxious magical apprentice Matthew, he arranges for Adam to become an apprentice to Landis, a wizard who works at the new university in Heart’s Eye.
(Full-blown universities are a relatively new thing, brought in by Lady Emily, a young woman from our world who develops magical powers and ignites a series of massive social changes. Prior to the series’ beginning it was a standard magical school that had been conquered by a necromancer; Lady Emily defeated him and established a new university on the site.)
There he runs into trouble—there are tensions between magicians and “mundanes,” Landis’s other apprentice Lilith hates him, and there’s an outside force stirring the pot.
Oh, and did I mention Adam makes some scientific discoveries that will shake an already shaken world?
The Good
*Although magic and a nascent Industrial Revolution have prevented the setting from becoming a total Game of Thrones-level medieval dystopian nightmare, the problems of medieval-type societies still exist. Class abuses (only these include wizards versus “mundanes” on top of nobles vs. commoners) are still common, serfdom still exists in the countryside, guildmasters and parents have extreme amounts of legal control over their apprentices and children, and efforts to get students to excel by encouraging rivalries and competition result in bullying and sabotage. Medieval-style urban poverty and overcrowding is commonplace, resulting in under-policed cities full of rampant street crime. The vested interests holding back social and economic changes (like the guilds) are weakened, but they’re still there and causing trouble. Though gender equality exists among magic-users, women without magic are dangerously vulnerable and treated as the property of their husbands or fathers. Although Nuttall’s work is nowhere near as cynical as Martin’s, there’s no Friendly Feudalism here.
*Per the above, the novel also deconstructs things like the Hogwarts House system, which ends up encouraging rivalry and bullying among the students rather than healthy competition.
*And Nuttall brings in the Leveller Movement, an early democratic force active during the English Civil War. Lady Emily brought modern science to a world that lacked it and, like our world, it didn’t take long for the Enlightenment to come with it. The poor, women, etc. don’t just sit around being miserably oppressed in this world — with firearms and other sorts of technology finally giving them something to trump the wizards’ magic and the feudal class’s armored knights, they do something about it.
*Per the above, the novel also discusses the dangers of radicalizing the downtrodden and how society ultimately does itself no favors by putting people in positions that make them vulnerable to manipulation. Whatever the excesses of the French Revolution, the nobles and the Ancien Regime brought it on themselves.
*The novel is a pretty quick read. And when things go down at the end, when the ultimate villain’s plot is revealed, things move even faster.
*The ending sets up a really interesting situation that later books will explore.
*Since The Cunning Man is set in a preexisting universe and actually runs “parallel” to some events that take place in earlier books, Nuttall helpfully provides an appendix.
The Bad
*There are missed opportunities for more description. For example, when Adam takes a train to Heart’s Eye early in the story, it’s his first time on a train. Everything — the station, the train itself, the people on it — would be completely new to him and could be described in much more detail. This is less of an issue once he actually arrives at the university.
*There are some instances of telling rather than showing. For example, Adam is reluctant to accept a gift because he grew up in a society where the receiver has obligations to the giver. Those are pretty much his exact words. It would have been better if this was expressed through his internal monologue — something like “what did he want? Nobody gives a gift without expecting something in return.” This could be useful for both character building (he’s suspicious, even of benefactors) and world-building (there’s a reason he’s suspicious of benefactors). Another example is the notion that a particularly character is not living up to their full potential and ought to be doing something else — it comes up a little bit earlier, but is discussed most blatantly at the end.
The Verdict
An interesting concept with some niggling flaws. 8.0 out of 10. Here is Nuttall’s series page, complete with free samples, for those who’d like to know more.