Steven Brust’s Good Guys Keep Magic Safe for Minimum Wage
There are plenty of shadowy agencies policing the use of magic in fantasy fiction, but the one in Steven Brust’s new novel Good Guys is the only one we can think of that so severely underpays its agents.
Good Guys
Hardcover $25.99
Good Guys
By Steven Brust
Hardcover $25.99
Brust’s organization works like any other underperforming government agency or non-profit: with lots of red tape, a calcified hierarchy, weird organizational structures, a lot of buck-passing, and a payroll department so strapped that it can only afford to pay its agents minimum wage, despite a globe-spanning reach and a stockpile of valuable magical artifacts.
Brust’s organization works like any other underperforming government agency or non-profit: with lots of red tape, a calcified hierarchy, weird organizational structures, a lot of buck-passing, and a payroll department so strapped that it can only afford to pay its agents minimum wage, despite a globe-spanning reach and a stockpile of valuable magical artifacts.
The choice to make the “good guys” of the title the stiffest of working stiffs adds humor and depth to the novel, pitting its beleaguered heroes against a vigilante with a mission and a group of amoral profiteers in a manner that mirrors real life,—plus a bit of magic—and gives Brust a chance to play with the concept of relative morality, making for a delightfully complex modern fantasy.
In a diner in Ohio, a mysterious assailant shoots a man several times with a shotgun. No one sees him enter or leave the building. First on the scene are Donovan Longfellow, battlemage “Hippie Chick” Susan, and new trainee Marci, investigators of magical crimes for the Foundation, the organization responsible for regulating the use of magic.
Donovan and his team have their work cut out for them: the victim was part of the Roma Vindices Mystici, a secret society practicing harmful magic for hire. As the killer claims more victims, a well-intentioned gunman tries to help anyone who will let him, and the Foundation becomes more secretive about its ties to the Mystici, causing Donovan and his team to wonder: are they really the good guys?
The Foundation is set up like no other magical enforcement organization I’ve encountered before. It tightly regulates and catalogues magic, keeping it relatively under wraps, but without the limitless dark budgets that often seem to power these sorts of groups, it’s strangling in its own red tape—the heroes must authorize every teleportation spell they use.
Unlike the crack supernatural agencies found in other books, the Foundation feels true to life. It helps that the obstructive nature of the bureaucracy plays into the central mystery—Longfellow and his team have trouble investigating the possibility of an inside operator because the departments are so stratified and rigid in their hierarchy, making it almost impossible to figure out who might’ve had access to key information, let alone who’s passing it to the baddies. The team is fighting their own procedures as much as they’re fighting the enemy.
The Incrementalists
Paperback $7.99
The Incrementalists
By Steven Brust , Skyler White
Paperback $7.99
It’s also interesting to note that said enemy is not as evil as you might expect. The Mystici’s victims are all corrupt, and as an organization, they’re clearly a lot more organized than the Foundation, which isn’t adverse to acting in a shady manner or deliberately keeping the truth on a “need to know” basis.
It’s also interesting to note that said enemy is not as evil as you might expect. The Mystici’s victims are all corrupt, and as an organization, they’re clearly a lot more organized than the Foundation, which isn’t adverse to acting in a shady manner or deliberately keeping the truth on a “need to know” basis.
Brust (the Vlad Taltos series; The Incrementalists) is an author who’s always jumped genres and forged his own way, and with the dashes of realistic procedural work played for humor and depth in Good Guys, this time he puts a new flourish on the established tropes of modern fantasy. These fantasy cops less Harry Dresden and more regular folks. “Good guys” or not, they’re good people.