Request for Answer Clarification by
chajka64-ga
on
23 Jul 2004 15:08 PDT
Thank you for the answer, however, I'm afraid it's not what I was
looking for, although it does sound like an interesting couple of
books and I will check them out.
A few more details on the books I have in mind... they take place in
a future (in the USA, I believe) after Merlin has already been
resurrected and already made magic, or as is referred to in the books,
'thaumaturgy', a part of modern-day technology. I am fuzzy on the
details, but the main character is a young man living on his own who
has flunked out of some Magic Academy and is scraping to make ends
meet. Somehow he runs across this pretty young female thief, they
start out on an adversarial meeting but of course by series' end are
friends. Somehow, in the first book, these two get involved in a
botched jewel heist that also involves other, darker powers of
thaumaturgy. Merlin gets involved, as well. He is not the primary
character, but does play an important role.
Another character is a shady high-level hitman sort of person who
has at his command an incredibly powerful, almost sentient computer.
I vaguely remember that he was a demi-god of some sort who actually
turns out to be related to one of the other principals and is a good
person.
One of the most interesting things was when Merlin explained the
origins of magic to his two young friends. Had something to do with a
conflict thousands of years ago, when bad wizards were draining people
of their life force, which made them more powerful than the good
wizards, of course at the price of the death of the mortals. The good
wizards managed to defeat the bad ones at some horrific price and
sealed them into a pit in the ground. In fact, I think one of the
plot points was some modern-day bad guy is trying to free the Old Ones
and unleash them on society again, and this is what Merlin and the two
young people are trying to prevent.
Another detail I remember from the books... Merlin was always
smoking a pipe, and the tobacco always had a different, pleasant,
weird smell. Sometimes like fruit, or perfume, or whatever, but never
like plain tobacco.
The books are light-hearted fun for the most part, very
imaginatively written and amusing, much in the vein of Robert Asprin's
'Myth' books. I have noticed in a lot of my searches that a lot of
these books are very weighty and dark, but these books I'm thinking of
are quite the opposite.
Hope this helps, -Mike*
