Dirty Magic

It all starts, like most great things, with an argument.
A friend of a friend (I do not halve that yet because I'm honestly not sure of my opinion of them yet) got into a discussion with me about George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, one of the only true fantasy series I have started reading since I became able to drink legally*. His complaints about the series were legion, though nothing I found myself able to agree with; but one of his complaints struck a chord with me: "I like high fantasy...the characters in [another fantasy series I won't denigrate here] throw magic around like it's a basketball."
Which brings me to this blog post.
It is no secret to the people who know me that I have found urban fantasy to be my preferred genre. It doesn't mean I'll never sally into another genre--my first published story, after all, was science fiction--but it is where I'm most comfortable. And yet, at the same time, there are series within that burgeoning genre that I just plain can't stand. I won't get into which series I mean--I don't want to earn attention solely through controversy--but the common factor in all of them, and the place in which A Song of Ice and Fire deviates, is this: they're all very crowded, and they're all too clean.

The crowded issue is one that I like to call Inflation of the Supernatural, and I found it to be most evident in (bear with me on this one) the Sonja Blue books by Nanci A. Collins (I recommend them, especially if you're in your early twenties or younger and want a working example of the word "splatterpunk"). Plenty of fantasy writers, whether medieval, Victorian, urban, suburban, what-have-you, have a tendency to add more magical creatures to their stories as they grow, whether within a single narrative or over the course of multiple books/issues/seasons. Of course, with the new supernaturals come new conspiracies, new groups, new rules of etiquette, new ways powers interact, etc., etc.; until eventually the world is so mired in supernatural things that the reader isn't mystified by them anymore, which often leads to the realization that all these new critters are really there to disguise the gaping holes in the plot.
This sort of thing can work in a Monster of the Week format where the new creature or concept is in and out within the course of the narrative, or in something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the point isn't really a coherent universe; but these cases are rare, and even there it makes the narrative a little chunky around the midsection. It's even more dangerous in urban fantasy because, when that world is overflowed with the supernatural, the disconnect is far worse than a world based around a historical period or a completely alien setting. If you're willing to take a geekier angle to this whole thing, check out White Wolf's original World of Darkness series (or hell, any roleplaying game, but this is the worst); near the end of the game's meta-narrative, people were joking about the five humans left in the World of Darkness untouched by the supernatural, crowded out by over one hundred sourcebooks worth of new critters.
By contrast, Martin's Song series has almost nothing supernatural in it, and what is there is apparently unique. There are the dragons; Valyrian steel; the Others; and manticores (which from the brief description are more like bugs). So far, that's really it, except for some random bits of old and strange magic (more on that in a moment). This allows, nay, forces, Martin to focus on the real tools an author needs to master--his characterization and his plot--and allows the reader to connect with the character, and, more importantly, makes the supernatural parts of the story that much spookier.
Which brings me to Dirty Magic.
A huge problem I have in a great many fantasy series is how clean-cut their magic system is. For lack of better terminology, many books tend to use magic with a huge, Bruckheimerian special effects budget; flaming runes on the air, heads exploding, things hurtling forward of their own will. Even the strange rituals cause massive earthquakes and the leveling of cities and the like. Yet...look at The Lord of the Rings, the book from which the archetype of The Wizard in modern fantasy stems. The magic in Tolkien's world is subtle, for the most part; Gandalf and Saruman are more charismatic and manipulative than they are hurlers of lightning. Sauron's machinations are subtle corruptions of personality, not sudden mutations of body (barring the Morgul blade that stabs Frodo, but I have to confess, I only remember the physical mutations being caused by that in the films...).
George R.R. Martin does Tolkien one better, and makes magic much more like the ritual magic and superstition practiced by actual, Earthly humans, albeit with the advantage that it works. Magic is bloody, and horrifying, and painful to watch, and its prices and side effects are horrifyingly clear. Yet, even when they are clear, they are fairly matter of fact, and pretty symbolically realistic--often with a little twist that leaves the reader clutching their innards and making noises that are vastly short on vowels.**
It is this system that I prefer. It is this magic that I like. The magic that can't be codified, can't be nailed down; the magic that is bloody and scary and clearly exists in the realm of the mythic where logic breaks down and woodsmen cut out virgin girls' hearts for their queens. I like the magic that makes people hang horseshoes on their doors and building their houses far away from certain roads, the flipside of the little children dodging sidewalk cracks. It's books like this that I love--books where the explanations of the horror only show you how little of the world you really understand, and how tenuous a spell's connection to sanity really is. I could wax poetic all night, but the truth is, this is what I love in urban fantasy, and this is what I hope to bring in my books: just enough codification to make you see the chaos.

*I assure you the two are unrelated; it's just an easy, non-numeric benchmark.
**I won't get into the details of Song's magic, for fear some poor reader might hunt me down and skin me before my career is even off the ground.