Books

10486 readers

17 users here now

Book reader community.

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Fantasy books with an interesting "soft magic" system? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The title pretty much says it! I'd like to explore that idea a little and would love to hear y'all's recommendations. This thought was originally inspired by lord of the rings, but I'm also currently on a little nostalgia trip by reading The Sea of Trolls and the soft magic system in that is pretty fun

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sanderson, who coined the terms, describes Potter as being a pretty good example of a mixed magic system.

Which makes sense to me. The spells they learn at school are a pretty hard magic system. But then things like "the power of love" are more reminiscent of a soft system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Thank you, I do think this was mentioned in the article I linked, and it does seem like Harry Potter is a good example of a mixed system. In my mind what makes it a soft system more fundamentally is how the author is inconsistent and the way magic is never really restricted by rules, even if there is a lot of focus on classes and how the spells are conjured, etc.