Several readers have received the beta draft of Spells of War. Now I can ignore it for a while. My purpose wasn’t to do trope-busting, but just to follow up on the implications of The Magic Battery. Even so, it has some unusual features.

The mages aren’t wizards casting spells at the enemy, but specialists who play a research and development role. Both sides employ mages, resulting in an arms race. There are no overt villains, just two power-hungry empires going up against each other. The big issue is what this does to warfare, the mages, and the people caught in the middle.

In this novel, even more than in The Magic Battery, Frieda Lorenz plays a crucial role without going near any battlefield. She discovers a crucial secret behind the nature of magic, and her choices will decide whether humans will have magic in the future.

I hope that has you interested.