Dames and Danger, Guns and Gravity Powers - A review of Larry Correia's Hard Magic

Was going through some of my old files and stumbled across one from back when I used to track every book I read per year, every year. I also stumbled across the entry for Larry Correia's Hard Magic.

Some of you might have read these books; the series is known as the Grimnoir Chronicles and there've been three novels so far with several short stories filling in the blanks. I've certainly read everything but my strongest attachment has always been to the one that started it all.

So. Hard Magic. The setting can be pretty well described as Philip Marlowe meets Myke Cole's Shadow Ops. A decade or so post-WW1, we have a sudden and relatively recent onset of people with powers (a genre of immense popularity this century) and the hilarity that ensues accordingly.

It's not just that, of course. The story is great but the setting is what really grabs me. For some reason, pre-WW2 America is one of my kinks, probably because it's in that sweet spot of technology crossing certain Rubicons while still leaving a world where unexplored territories can still exist, where mystery yet remains.

Of course, as a black man, I have no regrets about not being around in that particular time and place; reading about it will do me juuuuuust fine, thankyouverymuch.

Pardon me, I digress; So! Superpowered folks (Actives or Magicals)! 1932! The Great War is over, the veterans are home and times are hard all around. Some starving artist with a silly little mustache got himself killed rabble-rousing in the streets of Berlin, zeppelins fill the skies, Healers can reattach limbs and clear out lung cancer with a wave of the hand, Torches get paid to put fire out. It's a very different world from the history books you know, lemme tell ya.

Oh, and Japan is the great big brutal hegemonizing Empire set to conquer the world if America doesn't DO SOMETHING. It is lead by The Chairman, a sort of Shogun figure who only isn't the Emperor on a technicality. He is also the strongest Active alive.

Meet your protagonist: "Heavy" Jake Sullivan. Veteran of the Great War, ex-convict for a crime he absolutely did commit and would commit again given the chance; big, strong, blue-collar and waaaaay smarter than he looks. He's a Spiker which in the setting's parlance means he's a gravity manipulator. Pyrokines are Torches, telekinetics are Movers, teleporters are Travelers, superstrong folks are Brutes, gadgeteers are Cogs and so on and so on.

In their world, personality and intellect tend to correlate with your powers and Heavies as a rule are ... not known for their scintillating wit, shall we say. Needless to say, Sullivan here breaks the mould on that one.

As the book starts, he's relatively fresh out of jail and doing a sort of probation gig for the newly-minted FBI (send a Magical to catch a Magical, right?) where he's supposed to hunt down and kill-or-capture a female Brute. Turns out she's his ex. Worse, she's hooked up with a crew of kinda-badasses who all have powers too. None of them expected Jake to be as dangerous and effective as he was nor did he expect them to fend him off so effectively; kind of a mutual surprise society all around. The girl gets away and J. Edgar Hoover is not amused.

Then we meet Faye. Our other protagonist. Teenage Okie farm girl, flighty as a cloud in a blender but her adopted family is killed by agents of the Japanese Imperium for reason beyond her ken but she gets away because she's a suprisingly effective Traveler. She travels to the big city seeking information and revenge.

Somehow, they both get embroiled in the affairs of the Grimnoir society, a non-ancient conspiracy of Magicals who seem to be the only real opposition to the Imperium's plans. Politics and economics, you know how it goes.

What follows is a work of spectacular excitement, workmanlike writing elevated to the sublime by a really cool setting and spiced with badass highly imaginative fight scenes (seriously, Faye v. Toshiko, best teleporter-on-teleporter fight scene in all of fiction.) All in all, I loved this book a great deal and still do. It's good solid fun work with easily some of the best-executed fight scenes I've seen in any fiction, be it written, anime or movie. Great characters too. Not much in the way of black folks but I suppose it's not Larry Correia's job to do that for us. Whatever.

PS
If you're wondering why I used the "libertarianism" tag, then you definitely haven't read this books or heard of Larry Correia and should do both immediately.

PPS
No room for a "guns" tag, huh. If you're a gun nut, you're in for a treat with these books.