Mathemagics

by Margaret Ball

A mild-mannered suburban mom in this world, a warrior woman in an alternate reality, Riva Konneva is determined to secure her daughter's proper Earth education, but old otherworld enemies make the process difficult

Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Science Fiction Fantasy, Science Fiction, Sword and Sorcery

348 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Margaret Ball lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and near two grown children. She has a B.A. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas. After graduation, she taught briefly at UCLA, then spent several years honing her science fiction and fantasy writing skills by designing computer software and making inflated promises about its capabilities. She has written a number of science fiction/fantasy novels as well as two historical novels, and is currently working on a science fiction series to be released on Kindle and in paperback in the fall of 2017. She would love to be influenced by Connie Willis and the other authors listed but fears that is mainly wishful thinking.

Reviews

[StarMan]

You already know if you like this kind of book.

A bit dated, very over-the-top, and has bonus clever MATHS.

SUMMARY: capable female swordswoman warrior/mother + inept evil magician fantasy, mostly set in the frustrating world o' paper pushers (late 20th century-ish Earth), with occasional scenes elsewhere.

For me, it's ~2.67 stars. Somewhat entertaining, but no laugh-out louds, and super low on realism. Yes, it's obviously over-the-top fantasy -- but character actions and dialogue are just too, well, over-the-top, which gets tiring. Maybe I should drink a few pints of ale before reading such?

BONUS POINTS FOR: math-based magic (thus, 'mathemagics')

Not recommended for: those who take their fantasy oh-so-seriously
Recommended for : math lovers, readers of Sword and Sorceress I* fare

*to date, 30 books (short story collections, S&S I through XXX)

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

review of
Margaret Ball's Mathemagics
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 12 - December 4, 2021

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

My previous encounter w/ "Chicks in Chainmail" novels were 3 by Esther Friesner: Majyk By Accident, Majyk by Hook or Crook, & Majyk by Design. Maybe they weren't really Chicks in Chainmail novels but Friesner is the editor of 6 "Chicks" anthologies:

Chicks in Chainmail (1995)
Did You Say Chicks?! (1998)
Chicks 'n Chained Males (1999)
The Chick is in the Mail (2000)
Turn the Other Chick (2004)
Chicks and Balances (2015)

SO, that justifies writing about her before even getting into the bk currently being reviewed. Maybe I shd review Mathemagics by not writing about it or its author at all! That wd be different. Aren't you tired of all those same old, same old reviews? I cd just write about the weather.. or about how I shd really get around to replacing my shoelaces. Or, I cd write about how, as I've gotten older, I have more & more of an annoying tendency to drop out smaller words, prepositions & articles (most commonly).

"Nor could she just slash and hack her way through parent-teacher meetings, as she earnestly desired when confronted with administrators who tried to tell her her child belonged in program for the emotionally disturbed because she showed too much initiative." - back cover blurb

There're many things that endeared this bk to me. For one thing, it was like a rave, it came w/ its own drug dealer. Really. I mean I got a paper cut from flipping the pages, speed reading, I read about 100pp a second, & I started tripping balls. Then I discovered I had elephantiasis & that's why I tripped. Over my balls, y'know. What a reality check.

OK, I was fibbing - don't underestimate fibbing: remember, Eve was created from Adam's fib. Actually, what I was about to say before I so rudely interrupted myself, is that I lllooovvvveee this bk b/c Ball (tripping balls, right?) has her chapter headings be mathematical. I did that too, in my Paradigm Shift Knouckle Sandwich & other examples of P.N.T. (Perverse Number Theory) (written at the beginning of 2008 but not published until 2017: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/Book201... ) but Ball did it before me in 1996. That essentially makes her a goddess in my world. ANYWAY, chapter 1 is Chapter e to the power of zero. That means that she, as a mathematician much more knowledgable on the subject than I am, thinks that "e to the power of zero" = 1. I, on the other hand, being a HERETIC, think that it's an indeterminate form w/ no solution. That means that, right off the bat, the Ball's in the other court. Or something. Too bad. There goes "goddess" status, she's demoted to being a mere human.

The setting:

""We've found that the services of a professionally trained counselor are invaluable at stressful times like this."

"She closed the door before I could tell her that the only stressful thing about this interview was having to wait in this little box of a room while my groceries cooked by solar heat in the car trunk. It was a flimsy door, too; in my home reality of Dazan I'd simply have put my foot through it, then stood on the woman's throat until she fixed what was probably her mistake in the first place. But Dennis really liked me to conform to his people's behavior standards, and after the third time he'd had to bail me out I'd promised to act like a Paper-Pusher woman unless Stella or he were in actual physical danger." - p 10

Aahhhh.. Daydreams of physical violence - when all else fails, destroy thine enemy. Personally, I've made a vow to myself to never kill anyone. It's a challenge. I'm anti-war but not a pacifist. Ball really has fun having her character be able to wreak harm on her various persecutors. I can relate. The world wd be better off if we cd send guilt-tripping bureaucrats to a different dimension where they'd only make others of their own kind miserable.

""We haven't seen much of you here, Ms. Konneva" she said. "You didn't come to the Back-to-School Parents' Party, did you? Or drive on any of the field trips this year?"

""I study during school hours," I told her.

""Oh," she said. "How nice for you. Still, most really concerned parents make some effort to appear for important school functions."" - p 12

Wweellllll, she did qualify it by saying "most". I reckon that those other concerned parents realize that this type of manipulative speech is characteristic of the truly malevolent people that we, sadly, have to waste our time watching out for & fending off.

The next chapter is the set squared of the square root of 2. The square root of 2 is an irrational number but not a transcendental number. Anyway, the chapter heading is most simply expressed as "2". Hence, this is the 2nd chapter. The same logic is throughout: in other words, it's not like we get to chapter 3 & have the solution of the heading result in giraffe or something else other than 3.

Our hero(ine) is having a love affair w/ a human. I, personally, am no so sure I'm not done w/ humans. Any humanoid ETs out there browsing Earth signals looking for some good times? Consider me.

"Our bedroom had been about the size of one of Zolkir's prison cells before Dennis moved in his collection of classic science-fiction paperbacks. Now, with floor-to-ceiling shelves lining three walls, it was more like a walk-in closet. Sasulau, my sword, hung in her sheath from one bedpost, and the rest of my old fighting gear was stashed under the bed in a cardboard box from the Container Store. I shucked my Paper-Pushers costume, hung the jeans and shirt on a handy bookcase, knelt on the floor and fished around under the bed for the box.

""That's a beautiful sight to greet a man after a hard day of eight-grade math," said an appreciative voice behind me." - pp 21-22

I might add that I pefer female "humanoid ETs" capable of having sex w/ me. I'm very fond of traditional sexual activities but I'm open to other possibilities - as long as they excite my motivating DNA.

"It was one of Salla's classmates who saved my butt that day. The kid was called "hyperactive" and "difficult" on Paper-Pushers'; what that meant was that he noticed absolutely everything that was going on around him and insisted on discussing it. At the top of his voice. When he noticed that Vordo was flickering with the activation of a magic shield every time I tried to land a blow, he discussed that in a loud clear voice." - p 25

In the wonky spirit of this review, I'm going to interpolate something completely irrelevant here: I've been on 1. a spree of watching female reporter movies from the 1930s & 1940s. There's a feminism to them that appeals to me. I've watched all the Torchy Blane movies, e.g.. 2. I've been watching a collection of mad scientist movies. This has led to watching Bela Lugosi movies. I have to admit that I can only bear these for a few minutes at a time. Still, under those conditions, I'm enjoying them. Some of them have intrepid women reporters. Right now, I'm watching "The Corpse Vanishes". I think I've even seen it before but I remember so little of it that I'm watching it again anyway. Ordinarily I don't watch movies twice. This one has a woman reporter played by the actress Luana Walters. This got me interested in her. She acted in quite a few 'Grade B' movies. It seems to me that she deserved better than that. I was sad to read that she died from alcoholism at age 50. This is the kind of thing that I actually get upset about. Silly me.

Ahem.

But back to the novel under scrutiny. Specifically, the hero(ine)'s daughter.

"Salla shrugged. "Yeah, I hadda go to her office one afternoon last week. She's always asking these dumb questions, like, you know, she goes, how do you feel about puberty, and aren't you confused about boys, and really gross stuff about like private things, you know? And I go, like, I'm just a little kid, ma'am, I don't know what you're talking about."" - p 27

I don't think I used that many speech crutches when I was her age, did you?

Then there's "Chapter [π]": I asked myself what the brackets signify, I probably knew at some point. I went to the relevant end-note on p 339, apparently the brackets mean: the greatest integer less than or equal to what they enclose. In the case of π, that means 3. Hence this is Chapter 3. Chapter 2 cd've been [e], but it wasn't. Any of the chapters cd be [x] but then that wd confuse things, wdn't it?, b/c it wdn't solve to the chapter number but wd instead hint in the direction of solving for x w/o actually doing so.

Now, one of the villains in this bk uses mathemagics & uses a formula that I don't think I can write out properly here & wch has no end-note explaining it. I'll quote the appropriate passage & write out the formula as best I can:

"["]Why, a simple extrapolation from the figures in your last mailing tells me that your expected return on mailings can be increased exponentially with a probability of p(sub "t")(s|r,n),s=0—n."" - p 41

I reckon this is a mathematician's joke, perhaps a formula for bullshit. Later, the very same villain, thinking about the very same person he's trying to use for his personal advancement:

"Mikhalleviko had not needed to activate his Truth Function (Alt-F10-S-[f(x)], the manual said, but failed to say what x was supposed to be)" - p 63

I didn't try this on the machine I'm typing this review on b/c I'm afraid it'll make the funnier parts of the review disappear.

The writing style of this bk is very accessible & entertaining. Nonetheless, there's plenty of math interspersed that's probably hilarious to mathematicians. Alas, I only understand a few of the jokes. Here's my poor attempt at expressing one of them w/o using the proper math notation:

""Sin(x) = 1 ÷ cosec(x),"" - p 83

I decided to educate myself ever-so-slightly & found this: "Secant, cosecant and cotangent, almost always written as sec, cosec and cot are trigonometric functions like sin, cos and tan." ( https://revisionmaths.com/advanced-le... ) SO, at least I learned that "cosec" = cosecant & that the equation is probably trigonometry. To further translate the equation into 'natural speech' I get: The sine of x equals 1 divided by the cosecant of x. I suspect that if I knew the solution to this I'd get the punchline but it's possible that the author just threw some trig in for the fun of it. Anyway, I enjoyed it. & that's not all! The effect of this particular example of "mathemagics":

"A moment later, a shredded conglomeration of greenish-brown shapes, thicker than fog but thinner than pea soup, wobbled into the hall, walking as they moved. "The lack of opportunities for people in the lower class can cause frustration, depression, and even despair," they moaned.

""Tan(x) = sin(x) ÷ cot(x)!" Lavvu Lherkode snapped.

"The greenish-brown shapes flickered and changed to a nasty purplish-orange that oozed into all the parts of the hall where the shape hadn't been and left the original space clear. "Yet, in an open society such as the United States it is . . . easy for a person to move from one class to another."" - pp 83-84

''"Tan(2x) = 2 tan(x) ÷ 1 - the tangent squared(x)," Lavvu Lherkode said." - p 84

""Tan(2x) = 2 sin(x)cos(x)"" - p 84

I obviously don't hang out w/ the right people b/c none of my friends are this witty.

""cos(2x) = cosin squared(x) - sin squared(x)"" - p 85

''"Tan(2x) = 2 tan(x) ÷ 1 - the tangent squared(x)" - p 85

I hate to say it (NOT) but the mathemagician already tried that one to little avail. But I'm getting a HEAD of myself.

""Er—did you wish to suggest an alternative line of textbooks?" the board member inquired.

"Boatwright drew himself up. "The Bible is God's textbook," he said, "and it's the only one we need. It's not just a good idea—it's God's idea."

Mikh recognized that phrase; it had been on one of the posters in Boatright's office.

""In witness thereof, I am asking you, Lord, to cause these salacious, sinful, and Satanist books to vanish utterly. Cut out this moral cancer from the body of our nation! May the Lord God Jehovah remove all sinful books from this room!" Boatright thundered, raising his hands above the table loaded with textbooks." - p 72

Any story having a pompous hypocritical money-grubbing fundamentalist as the bad guy can't be all bad. I don't want to give away what this is all about b/c this was one of the most fun ideas in the bk for me. Nonetheless, here's another relevant quote:

"The offices of the American Values Research Center, although not nearly as luxurious as Duke Zolkir's great hall, had at least the advantage of not being covered with the residue of dissolving social studies textbooks." - p 86

There's stereotyping &/or poking-fun-at-stereotyping galore.

"It was all Cathy Harper's fault, really, for putting this outlandish material in the collection of readings. Grail legends and African stories and Polynesian "mythology"—as if a bunch of half-naked brown-skinned people with flowers in their hair could come up with anything to compare with the great literature of Europe!" - pp 97-98

Sally has trouble in school for a reason many of us are familiar w/: She's smarter than the teachers & she goes further than what they require - hence, they're not swift enuf to realize that that's what's happening. Here's an example of Sally's feminism:

""Among the Hopi Indians, for instance, Spider Woman creates the first people and goes on the first quest, when she looks for somebody who can give them the gift of speech."" - p 100

""at the moment I think I could live quite happily without seeing any men again."

""Ha," said Norah. She leaned against a tree and breathed deeply. "Wait till you've been celibate as long as I have. After my ex took off for California I cried and ate chocolates until I looked like this, and now I can't have a meaningful relationship because I'm not willing to take my clothes off in front of another adult."

""You have to take your clothes off to have a meaningful relationship?" I asked, momentarily distracted." - p 135

Ha ha!

Then along comes the simplest chapter numbering yet: "3 squared + 1". (p 155) Everyone knows that 3 squares is a crowd & that if you add another person who may or may not be a square there's no guarantee that there'll be any sex. The "square root of 121" (173) is pretty simple too. You just take the square root of the 2 "1"s & ignore that "2" in the middle. Put the 2 results die-by-side together, & Voila!

There's a fair amt of a type of humor that probably gets at least a chuckle out of people who attend SF Cons.

"The camera zoomed in for a close shot of the books behind Daddy Bob: rows and rows of Dragonspatula and Star Trek books. Becky sneered. Jason had recently introduced her to real science fiction. Heinlein and like that." - p 161

I might just make an exception to my not generally reading the SF series & read those "Dragonspatula" books. Unfortunately, they may only manifest cook bks in alternate universes instead of romance novels.

"The slight touch of the thing's fingers sent chills through Sikarouvanna's body. But it withdrew almost at one, slipping off the blade of her shortsword like a wraith. "Why, you're only a girl!" it cried, stamping one foot and tossing its mane of raven curls. "Where's the Hero? He's supposed to appear by Chapter Two at the latest."" - p 166

I enjoy the ongoing poking fun at the educational system. I reckon the author has had some experience along these lines & is happy to get her 'revenge' in writing.

"The large red "D—" scrawled across the front of Salla's paper was visible to the whole class as Fishbeck handed it back.

"Salla's face turned red and she scowled at the paper. "What's wrong with the structure?"

""I'm sure you can read my comments," Fishbeck said, "since you love reading so much."

""Too many paragraphs," Salla read aloud, "ten points off. Too many sentences in each paragraph, ten points off. Citing references you haven't read, twenty—I have so read them!"" - p 176

The genius of the autodidact is incomprehensible to the mediocrity of the untertan.

""The mathemagical formula that transfers people and things between realities. See, you can think of a Fourier transform as taking something from the time domain to the frequency domain. It's not exactly clear that the frequency domain has to exist in our reality; it's just an analytical way of looking at these things. And the inversion, of course, is a Laplace transform."" - p 236

Oh, really?! Sounds French to me.

"In mathematics, a Fourier transform (FT) is a mathematical transform that decomposes functions depending on space or time into functions depending on spatial or temporal frequency, such as the expression of a musical chord in terms of the volumes and frequencies of its constituent notes. The term Fourier transform refers to both the frequency domain representation and the mathematical operation that associates the frequency domain representation to a function of space or time." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier...

"Time domain refers to the analysis of mathematical functions, physical signals or time series of economic or environmental data, with respect to time. In the time domain, the signal or function's value is known for all real numbers, for the case of continuous time, or at various separate instants in the case of discrete time. An oscilloscope is a tool commonly used to visualize real-world signals in the time domain. A time-domain graph shows how a signal changes with time, whereas a frequency-domain graph shows how much of the signal lies within each given frequency band over a range of frequencies." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_do...

For the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

[MasterSal]

Magic system based on maths and with a sense of humour? Sounds good to me

[Nathan C. Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truly enjoy Margaret Ball's writing style, a combination of sarcastic wit and descriptive action/adventure. This book is actually a continuation of the short story "Career Day" from the anthology Chicks in Chainmail edited by Esther M. Friesner. In the story we follow the developing lifestyle of Rivakonneka, a woman warrior from an alternate dimension living in our modern world with her daughter and developing a relationship with her daughter's math teacher. It isn't long, however, before trouble from home follows her to our dimension. A very fun read, done with intelligence and style. Highly recommended.

[Tim Ponygroom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining even if you don't get the math jokes; hilarious at times if you do. Don't let the chapter numbering system put you off. I felt I got to know Riva and Dennis, Becky and Salla. Dingbat Boatright, not so much, although I might have met him in this Universe already.

May you never have a personal experience in Outer Yark.

[Howard Gibbins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a lot of fun to read. It concerns a former warrior woman Riva Konneva, who has taken refuge on Earth (or the Planet of the Paper-pushers as it is referred to) to help educate her daughter, and to stay away from the magician/wizard who is the father of her daughter, and not a nice person.

In the alternate reality that they came from magic is performed through the use of mathematics. This may seem a little odd to diehard fantasy readers, but it actually works very well in the way the novel is structured. It also doesn't hurt that Margaret Ball is a mathematician and computer scientist.

This novel is the second in a series, however there is no indication of this in the beginning of the book. It is listed on the cover as "A Chicks in Chainmail Novel" which does support this idea. Upon consulting the Internet Science fiction Data Base it turns out that the first book in the series is called "Career Day", well the third is called "Tales from the Slush Pile", and the fourth "Fun with Hieroglyphics". Unfortunately I haven't read any of these other three, but will definitely be keeping an eye out for them.

A very good read, With lots of humour and interesting sub-plots outside of the main one.

[Donnalee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this was entertaining and very light, except for incest/child sexual abuse of preteen theme and dissociation thrown in there. It works out, but it is an uneasy chunk to throw into the lightest most pleasantly trivial book of this type that I have read for a long time. I could have used it staying all fluffy.

[Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting take on magic based on math. Part of the Chicks in Chainmail series. Somewhat stilted and trending towards YA fiction, but a fun read.

[Becky HARMAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story was a lot of fun!

[Elvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really fun read. I picked it up second hand while traveling, to supplement my airplane reading, and am very happy I did. Although the writing in the 'relationship development' parts is a little unconvincing, for the most part it's a very smooth read. I appreciated the in-jokes for science fiction fen and people who know math, and I liked the underlying messages as well. Maybe a bit heavy handed with the male villains, but not jarringly so. I wish there were sequels!

[Zach, "Gnome" Israel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Riva, Dennis, and Salla. They are wonderful characters, and it's hard not to root for them in this story. However Margaret Ball does get really preachy in parts, and does make her villains a little one note in parts.

There is a part where she has moderate a panel where two authors are having an argument about wither or not it is appropriate for women to serve in combat roles. The man on the con side is an overweight bastard who makes his points by screaming. Ball is a decent writer, but I just wish she'd put more thought in places.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A woman warrior from a swords-and-sorcery world where mathematics is the underpinning of magic has a challenge in Austin, Texas where she moved to give her daughter a chance at a better education. It would have been worth it just for the chapter numbering which requires fairly sophisticated mathematical computations.

[Moontyger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've actually read this book several times and I really love it. It's hilarious, but also deals well with some serious issues. I honestly wish she'd written some sequels, but as far as I know, this is the only one (other than the stories in the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies).

[Debi Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful!

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

check it out! A Cover by Larry Elmore

[Ginger K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost made me want to spend more time studying math. Almost.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good, old-school sf/fantasy stuff here. Interesting subtexts of feminism, abuse, and religious fanaticism still ring bells even after a decade or so. Nice.

[Lisa w]

it is about people from one of the chicks in chain mail storys . a good read if you are the type who watches things like xena. a fun read.

[John Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the concept of this book, combining a sword and sorcery woman with a modern day maths teacher.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dated, but a fun read. The chapter number formulae are cool, especially if you've had calculus and it's been a while since you've used that sort of math....

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another delightful visit with an old friend.

[Thomas LaLumiere]

Good narrative. Sometimes hard to follow if you are not somewhat knowledgeable about Sci-Fi/Fantasy books.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oldie but goodie that mixes modern setting with characters from heroic fantasy, plus math!

[Elizabeth S. Q. Goodman]

Recommended me by Rebecca B.