Physical Magic: A Martial Arts Progression Fantasy

by William C. Tracy

**Book Bloggers' Novel of the Year 2025 Semi-Finalist!**
Welcome to the Shifting Lands.

Silluka was born with only one arm and could never practice the exacting motions to summon the favor of the gods. Caught stealing, she is forced to test her powers or be branded an outcast. She fails, and loses citizenship to her village.

In a fit of desperation, Silluka tries to steal a badge of citizenship from a mysterious elder, but instead, Elder Quilqi shows Silluka a different path to gain the powers of the gods, aided by an octopus-like technological wizard who worships their own eldritch divinities. Time is short for training however, because a new island is speeding toward the coastal town, throwing deadly hurricanes and tidal waves before it and threatening all who live there.

Only the gods and godlike storm warriors protect the village from destruction, but all of them fail when a mysterious creature bursts through the wall. It's only one forerunner for a species of terrifying fast, deadly, and ready to invade the larger island. The village must flee inland before the invasion, while Silluka is weighed down by her outcast status and her brother’s failing abilities. To save herself, her family, and her village, Silluka must overcome stigma and self-doubt. She must learn the scope of the world outside her village. She must learn Physical Magic.

Fantasy / Progression Fantasy / Cultivation / LGBT / Bisexual / Gay / Lesbian

New Adult and Adult

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 5, 2024

About the author

William C. Tracy writes tales of the Dissolutionverse: a science fantasy series about planets connected by music-based magic instead of spaceflight. This series currently includes a three-book epic space opera cycle. It also includes five novelettes and novellas, including a coming of age story, tales of political intrigue, a Sherlock Holmes-like mystery, a Jules Verne style adventure. Several books include LGBT-friendly elements.

His first epic fantasy from NineStar Press is Fruits of the Gods, about a land where magic comes from seasonal fruit, and two sisters plot to take down a corrupt government.

William is a North Carolina native and a lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy. He has a master's in mechanical engineering, and has both designed and operated heavy construction machinery. He has also trained in Wado-Ryu karate since 2003, and runs his own dojo in Raleigh NC. He is an avid video and board gamer, a reader, and of course, a writer.

In his spare time, he cosplays with his wife such combinations as Steampunk Agent Carter and Jarvis, Jafar and Maleficent, and Doctor Strange and the Ancient One. They also enjoy putting their pets in cute little costumes and making them cosplay for the annual Christmas card.

You can get a free Dissolutionverse short story by signing up for William's mailing list at http://williamctracy.com/contact-me/

Or follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/wctracy for writing updates, cat pictures, and thoughts on martial arts.

Reviews

[Kate C · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a disabled person myself, I was very excited to see this book offered! There were a lot of profound messages about disability - the whole society Silluka is a part of is incredibly ableist “only the strong survive in the Huaca” is something that’s said a lot- and Silluka disagrees, and so do I. Sometimes when you’re disabled you just stop trying at all cause it feels hopeless and that’s what everyone expects you to do anyways, but having people who believe in you and people to fight for makes you reach for things you never knew you could. Seeing Silluka step into her power was beautiful and profound for me. This book is not centered on romance at all which is totally different for me, but it was still engaging and fascinating. This was a really unique read, and very worth it.

Thank you BookSirens for the ARC. This is my voluntary review.

[Julia Sarene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for SPFBO, this is only my personal opinion, group verdict might differ widely!

Physical Magic by William C. Tracy

This story immediately stood out to me because of its setting. It is clearly not drawing from the usual Western medieval fantasy toolbox. Instead, the world feels inspired by island-based cultures of the Pacific, with gods tied to storms and survival, and communities that must eventually move on when their land can no longer sustain them. That sense of impermanence, and the harsh rules built around it, give the book a distinct atmosphere that feels both fresh and unsettling.

At the heart of the story is Silluka, a disabled protagonist who has grown up internalizing the belief that she is useless. I really appreciated how much space the book gives to this mindset. Her journey is not framed as suddenly becoming capable or exceptional, but as slowly questioning the story she has been told about herself. What resonated most for me was that she needs to prove her worth to herself first. The change does not come easily, and it does not come all at once.

The society around her is deeply flawed, built on the idea that only the strong and magically capable deserve to survive and move on. I liked that the book does not fully excuse this belief, but also does not resolve it too neatly. Some characters begin to question it, some do not, and the shifts in thinking feel tentative rather than magically fixed. A few ideas and changes are handled lightly, but not to the point of feeling unearned.

The magic system itself is familiar in concept, but I enjoyed how it is presented. It does not get lost in pages of technical explanation. Instead of hyper-detailed descriptions of every movement, the focus is on balance, stance, dexterity, and intention. It is easy to grasp without feeling shallow. I also liked that the book gently suggests that physically perfect movement might not be the only way to access the power of the gods, which ties in well with its broader themes.

There is an element later on that functions as an assistive tool for magic use. I am generally wary of anything that risks turning into a magical cure for disability, and I would not have minded if there had been no such solution at all. That said, this felt more like an aid than a miracle fix, especially because it opens possibilities for people with many different kinds of bodies and conditions, not just one. Framed that way, I was comfortable with it.

Inclusion is another quiet strength of this book. Silluka’s brother is openly bi and moves naturally between relationships with different genders, and no one treats this as remarkable. Silluka herself is also described as being attracted to more than one gender, though her lack of relationships feels closely tied to her internalized belief that she is not worthy, rather than a lack of interest. There is the faintest hint of something possibly developing for her, but it never takes over the story. The casual, matter-of-fact queerness of the world felt natural and meaningful, and the author identifies as bi/pan as well.

One of my favorite additions to the story were the octopus-like artificers. Their dialogue and banter are genuinely fun, and their enthusiasm for inventing all the things adds humor and a slightly strange, inventive edge to the world.

There is one small worldbuilding hiccup early on involving how citizenship tokens are handled, which briefly pulled me out of the story, but it never becomes a real plot issue and was easy to move past.

I listened to this as an audiobook. The narration took a little getting used to at first, as the pauses at commas felt almost as long as full stops, which made the rhythm feel slightly disjointed early on. After a while, though, I adjusted and stopped noticing it. The narrator is queer, uses they / them pronouns, and is Native Hawaiian, which felt like thoughtful and fitting casting for this story.

This book clearly sets up a larger series, with much more to come, but it still felt satisfying on its own. Overall, this is a thoughtful, inclusive fantasy with a strong emotional core, a distinctive setting, and a protagonist whose struggle with self-worth feels honest and earned.

[EEX · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gets a relatively high rating from me for its originality, engaging setting, awesome magic system, and unique, interesting characters. I really wish we could give half stars, because what I really want to go is give this book a 3.5, but I'm going to round it up to 4. I feel it's more than "just OK."

So I'll start with explaining what I liked:

Physical Magic throws you right into the story, with a girl named Silluka who can't use magic like the rest of her people. She has been disabled from birth and is unable to fulfill the requirements of bodycasting to produce magic. This makes her unfit (as far as her village is concerned) to be a citizen.

While a physical sort of magic has been written about before, the way this author handles it is very special and unique. It's almost reminiscent of Death's Gate Cycle although tilted more toward martial arts than dancing, which I much prefer. And this magic is just... intrinsic to the society. So important that if you can't cast it... Well, that's where the story gets interesting.

If you don't pass a "test" by your 18th birthday, in which you stand before the elders and cast a perfect "chayu" (which produces an aura of light around you), you are cast out from society and become "undesirable." It is absolutely ableism, and Silluka is so beaten down by being told her whole life that she can never perform a correct chayu that she believes it. On top of being physically disabled, she's cut off from the one thing her society expects everyone to be able to do, making her magically disabled as well.

There's a ticking clock bearing down on Silluka, because her whole village (the Huaca) has to move soon. There's an event causing their current location to no longer be habitable, which I don't want to spoil, but it means that her not being a citizen and having to cross the desert on her own (without the benefit of magic) will be a problem. It's a rare story that ends up heavily leaning on character vs. environment as a conflict, which I really enjoyed. And while there are bad guys that have to be fought, it's really the desert itself that's a major issue.

Anyway, really liked the premise. But there were a few problems.

First, Silluka fails to get a citizen chit, which is a physical object denoting her as a citizen. The test to become a citizen is performed in front of the elders, who would (hopefully) know and remember the people who tested to become citizens. When Silluka fails to get a chit, she decides to steal one, which would be odd in itself because the elders should know who qualifies as a citizen already, but worse than that, she decides to steal a chit from an elder who watched her test and knows she failed.

I feel like there are a couple ways this COULD have worked. IE: if the elder she was supposed to have stolen the chit from was like "Hey, you idiot, we know who the citizens are already, eh?" And maybe citizen chits are also bought and sold on the black market, and it's essentially a numbers game. Like, the elders put a certain amount of chits out, and whoever gets them gets them. But the village is too cooperative for that. In the end, I'm not sure the author truly thought this through, and if Silluka was supposed to be clever (as stated at the end of the book) she probably would have figured out for herself that this couldn't possibly work.

The good news is that nothing came of this. The plan failed. But I would have liked to see something lampshaded, like the elder Silluka was trying to rob saying something like "good gods, child, you must have known this wouldn't have worked logistically!"

Second, the book gets extremely repetitive.

Concepts are repeated more than necessary for the reader to remember them. For example, Silluka has a childhood friend. This is mentioned offhandedly, which is fine. It's gone into detail enough to be memorable, but then it's brought up again several more times, in increasingly shoehorned ways. It sometimes feels like readers aren't being trusted enough to remember certain details. And this isn't the only example of this happening.

The book also gets repetitive with one particular word: stump. Notably for the missing part of Silluka's right arm.

There was one page where it was used five or six times, which took my focus off the story and put it on the word itself. Other words could have occasionally been substituted. Since it was established early that it was her right arm, just sometimes saying "right arm" would have been fine, or "shorter arm," or even the term "residual limb." When she thought she was an "undesireable" early in the book, she could have referred to it as her "defect" until she started to believe in herself more. Heck, you could have even gotten something fancy in there once in the book, like "truncated arm" or something.

To be clear, this isn't about whether or not the word is OK to use in general, because some people missing a limb are glad to use the word "stump" to describe it. The point is that where writing is concerned, it's used too much. It would be the same as using any other word repeatedly, like "arm" or "fist" or "shoulder." You gotta mix it up a bit!

As much as I like the magic and would love to read worldbuilding write-ups about it, there is a lot of places in the story where the pacing is very much broken by descriptions about how the magic works. I can't decide whether it's vital or not; I see this book as a sort of setup for the rest of the series (perhaps?) and will have to judge whether this was really a necessary part of the first book or not. It's a hybrid between a very rigid magic system and a vibes system, with rules that exist to be broken in creative and/or skilled ways. At this point, I feel like there could have been a little less description of it. Or if there had to be as much practice as there was, it might have been better to combine it with actual battle. Even a minor foe would have sufficed. That way there are at least some stakes.

Like I said earlier, though, this book is an enjoyable read, and I've already started book 2. I'm looking forward to watching Silluka grow and improve!

[Tony Fecteau · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read on a strange world. Ritualistic movements for magic... It was interesting to see the knowledge gaps be filled in during the story's progression.

[The Reading Ruru (Kerry) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read as a judge (Fantasy Faction) for SPFBOXI - any ratings and/or opinions are my own and should not be taken as reflective of team.
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