The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Studies in Demonology (Warlock in Training, 1; Rogue in the Making, 2; Blood for the Spilling, 3)
by T.J. Nichols
Published by the author, 2017, 2018
Five stars

As it turns out, I read volume 1 of this trilogy, “Warlock in Training,” when it was first published in 2017. So, I’ll start this review with a quotation from that one:
“In our own world, in my nation, we love to demonize the “other,” whether they be gay people, people of color, or Muslims. In Angus Donohue’s world they demonize, um, demons. The human world is linked to the demon world, called Demonside, by magic. Magic is the source of energy for humans. It is power, and humans who can handle magic (wizards) are hungry for it. Angus is in training to be a warlock, which is a wizard who can call a demon and use that demon’s magic to increase his own power.”

Actually, it was a pretty insightful review, and I clearly loved the book, but was hungry for more. I didn’t see it as a romance, but considered Angus and Saka’s relationship to be part of the larger picture, the epic adventure to save the world. I’m so glad I found the entire trilogy, because it is a great story, well written, and filled with rich characters and settings.

Now, having read all three books – at some 925 pages – I can look at that big, remarkable, epic picture that TJ Nichols created. There is a lot of Tolkien here; and also a lot of Harry Potter. This is no criticism – the roots of much contemporary magical fantasy lie in these stories. There is also a powerful detail that I noted in my earlier review about the revelatory truth in the animated 2001 film “Monsters, Inc.”: the power of a child’s laughter is far greater than that of her fear. In the Nichols trilogy, it is the power of lust that is stronger than the power of fear or pain.

The other core motif that pervades this trilogy is the destructive power of greed and prejudice. This is a world where magic exists, and while not everyone can work with magic, everyone knows about it. The human world has known of the demon world for centuries. Some humans, however, have used demons as expendable resources for their own accumulation of magic, and have done so to the point of catastrophic climate change both in Humanside and in Demonside.

Of course, this hoarding of magic can be seen as two different metaphors. It is the extraction and use of natural resources from the land without regard to the consequences of that unthinking use. Plus, the demons, whose magic is the source of the warlock’s power, become both the enslaved African workers brought to the New World, and the Indigenous peoples who already populated the Americas when Europeans first arrived. Two vast populations stripped of their humanity (demonized) in order to justify their disposability.

The Warlocks who are at the center of this abusive hoarding of magic live in a country called Vinland. This name is taken from a great hoax of the 1960s, in which a map appeared which documented Nordic exploration of what is now the Northeastern USA in the twelfth century. Vinland is, more or less, New England. Its capital city is New London – which is indeed the name of a real city in Connecticut, founded in 1656, on the Thames River. This clever association between real and fantasy geography continues with one of Vinland’s neighbors, New Holland, which I take to be the rest of the Eastern seaboard. In the second and third books we get to know yet another country with powerful magic: The Mayan Empire. Its capital is Uxmal, which indeed is the site of the great Mayan metropolis in the Yucatan of Mexico. One of the richest aspects of Nichols’s worldbuilding in their epic trilogy is this sly use of geography that reminds us (us Americans at least) that this imaginary place is a metaphor for our own, deeply flawed civilization and its violent history.

The demons are not just a historic avatar of “evil” that has its roots in magic lore (or religious lore); they are different from humans, although if they were extraterrestrials, they would be called humanoid. They LOOK different. Indeed, Saka is portrayed as having dark red skin, black horns, and a tail: the archetypal image of a devil. It is subversive of the author to make this character, who so embodies the subhuman other that Angus has been taught to fear, into a smart, charming, and beautiful person. He is a person loyal to his people, but compassionate and generous. His relationship with Angus is both forbidden and essential to the survival of the planet. The reader learns to love Saka as Angus does.

Angus Donohue is the reluctant warlock, grabbed by the first demon he ever summons and dragged through the void into Demonside – otherwise known as Arlyxia. His demon is Saka, head mage of the Lifeblood Mountain tribe. Saka teaches Angus the truth about the world in which he was raised, and together these two men create a challenge to the status quo in both demon and human worlds. Their quest becomes one of survival in order to save the world. It is a race against time, and against tremendous odds. It is their love for each other that will ultimately be the touchstone of the world’s fate.

Wow. Bravo. Read it.