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HomeExploreBooksFantasy With Ingenious Magic Systems
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A good magical rule gives a character something to work with and something to work around. These 25 novels and novellas make that pleasure part of the reading: precise commands, limited materials, dangerous costs or systems whose benefits are unequally shared. Some are close to engineering puzzles; others keep mysteries while making the constraints matter to the people living with them. The recommendations explain what is worth investigating without giving away the cleverest solutions. Several begin longer sequences, identified below. For a shorter first experiment, try The Emperor's Soul; for industrial intrigue, Foundryside; for a playful complete adventure, Tress of the Emerald Sea.

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The Black Prism (2010)

by book_guy  • 
The Black Prism
Book
8.4/10on Open Library
Published
Drafters turn light into a physical substance, with different colours producing different properties. Weeks makes the available material and its effect on the user part of the tactical interest, then places that power inside an unstable political order. There is a good deal to learn, so the explanatory passages are part of the bargain. It opens the five-book Lightbringer sequence, whose scope grows well beyond this first account of the rules.
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