For the first 90 pages of Flex, I couldn’t help but think: It’s like someone took breaking bad and turned it into a magical fantasy story. I kept waiting to see the sympathetic protagonist turn into the antagonist, for sad, lonely Valentine to suddenly realize she was trapped within the web of a psychopath narcissist, and for poor, burned, super sassy daughter Aliyah to tell her daddy she hated him. That kept not happening, although Gunza continued to remind me quite a bit of Tuco Salamanca.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Have you ever encountered something new and then your brain jumps in so fast, associating a mile a minute, finding similarities until all you can see are the similarities? I had to stop about a 100 pages in and start again.
Paul Tsabo, an ex-cop and current insurance investigator whose job it is to find ‘mancers so they can be stopped (killed, or pulled into the army for brainwashing, to become a unimancer), discovers he, himself, is a bureaucromancer (a magic of forms and files, of orderliness and documentation which binds society). Paul finds himself set against a paleomancer named Anathema, who is bent on destroying civilization via Flex: a drug that gives, however temporarily, ‘mancers magic to mundanes.
Imagine a world where magic grows from intense love and obsession with a thing, where that obsession can change the world around him to fit his desires, but at a cost. Such magic violates the basic laws of physics and reality demands a balance. For every magical change effected, some other, opposite change will befall the ‘mancer. Think Harry Potter conjuring a Patronus to protect him from Dementors, but to balance out that conjuring a real stag with sharp, pointy antlers comes down out of the forbidden forest and chases him until he falls and sprains his ankle. Oh, and while Harry is laying there in the grass with his sprained ankle, trying to ward off the descending dementors AND keep an eye on that stag, some asshole calls the cops because there are no real stags in the forbidden forest, which means someone must be using magic, and Harry, having survived the dementors, is hauled off to the army for brainwashing, because being a ‘mancer is illegal.
Such a cool concept. The magic and rules at play make sense and the author doesn’t cheat just to get the characters out of a difficult situation. The idea of there being consequences to the magic – a balance that must be maintained—that’s very, very cool stuff.
There were some issues in my mind with Paul’s early relationship with his teacher, Valentine; specifically, his belief that she is Anathema. He treats this as though it is an “oh, well” sort of thing, not with the fiery “I’m-gonna-kill-you-bitch” attitude one would expect meeting the person he thinks burned his daughter nearly to death. When he introduced her to his burned daughter in the hospital, while believing her to be this monster, made no sense to me and pushed me right out of the fantasy.
Aside from that, and especially as he comes to realize Valentine can’t be Anathema, the characters all seem very real, and well-rounded, progressing toward what they each will become. I’d like to see this story spawn a series – it would be interesting to see what use others might try to make of Paul and Velentine. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a well-crafted world and especially new and previously-unexplored magics.
Cover art: The cover is stark, but designed well. It gives an interesting tidbit of anticipation to the story, and…unlike so many covers…actually has something to do with the story therein.
Reviewed by Laura Langford.
Eviscerating Pen 
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