Thoughts on Flex

2015-03-17T14:58:19Z

Flex is theferrett's novel. I'm always excited when someone I read online has a traditional novel published.

The central characters: the protagonist Paul Tsabo, an ex-cop insurance investigator who loves methodical paperwork, his reserved young daughter, his ex-wife are very movingly painted, and much more involved with the main character and the plot than most families in urban fantasy. I was really moved by his description of how paperwork makes civilisation.

In the acknowledgements at the end, he describes specific improvements to the novel people suggested, not just that they helped a lot, that was really interesting.

He does what I always try to do, to make a magic system that's dramatic and cool and full of cool ideas (make something from a videogame! make anything from paperwork!) but also clear what's going on so it's clear when the hero has an instant-win button and when he doesn't. Not out of arbitrary pedantry, but so there's actually any form of tension in the story whatsoever. Ferrett describes why this usually makes a better story very very well here: Avoiding Doctor Strange Syndrome. And he does it much better than most books. Although, unfortunately, I felt he didn't succeed as well as I'd hoped: in the vast majority of scenes, it was clear what the possibilities were, what was easy, what was possible with a cost etc, so naturally you didn't even think about it. But some of the big "this is how the magic system works" moments I felt relied too much on "some sense of fairness drawn from the practitioner's subconscious", when honestly, it could have been made up either way and made as much sense.

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jack

Thoughts on Flex