Earth Logic

by Laurie J. Marks

No cover — Laurie J. Marks: Earth Logic (EBook, Small Beer Press)

Kindle, 452 pages

Published by Small Beer Press.

(9 reviews)

A sweeping drama of war, intrigue, magic, and love

With Earth Logic , Laurie J. Marks continues the epic of her stunningly imagined world of Shaftal, which she first introduced in Fire Logic .

Shaftal has a ruler again, a woman with enough power to heal the war-torn land and expel the invading Sainnites from Shaftal. Or it would have a ruler if the earth witch Karis G'deon consented to rule. Instead, she lives in obscurity with the fractious family of elemental talents who gathered around her in Fire Logic . She is waiting for some sign, but no one, least of all Karis herself, knows what it is.

A sweeping drama of war, intrigue, magic, and love

With Earth Logic , Laurie J. Marks continues the epic of her stunningly imagined world of Shaftal, which she first introduced in Fire Logic .

Then the Sainnite garrison at Watford is attacked by a troop of zealots claiming to speak for the Lost G'deon, and a mysterious and deadly plague attacks the land, killing both Sainnites and Shaftali. Karis must act or watch her beloved country fall into famine and chaos. And when Karis acts, the very stones of the earth sit up and take notice.

3 editions

nekokat reviewed Earth Logic: Elemental Logic by Laurie J. Marks

Review of 'Earth Logic: Elemental Logic' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It's taken me a long time to finish this, and I don't know if it's because I'm out of practice reading books on paper, or if it's that it's a ... well, it's a complex read. What I love about it also makes it somewhat impenetrable at times: it operates on a level of emotional nuance and subtlety that sometimes means you have to read conversations a few times over to figure out what's going on beneath the surface. You have to get to know the way the characters think, react and feel... just like in real life, a simple conversation is often much more than that, and the meaning each person takes away from it might differ. It's a slowly-unfolding read that builds and grows more like a plant than an action movie. There's never a moment that leaves you breathless, but there is a sense of going deeper and deeper into the story and its people, of coming to know them almost as old friends, of chewing on the larger political problems that they are trying to disentangle. Above all I love the coziness of the everyday scenes, the way this group of old friends becomes a family to each other, with all the give and take, all the frustration and caretaking that this implies. If Fire Logic was a love story at heart, this one may be a story of chosen family. And of course there are the larger questions of justice and reparations, of what is lost in war that cannot ever be made right, of how one cannot help but be changed even in fighting to remain oneself.