Some magic systems make your head spin with rules. Others drift more like a feeling—quiet, atmospheric, and hard to pin down. As a reader, I enjoy both. But the ones that stay with me, the ones that feel real, all have one thing in common: they mean something. Sometimes that means they affect stakes, risk, tension. Sometimes, something in us shifts as we read. And sometimes, if the system is doing more than just serving the plot, it gives us a glimpse of the world we already live in.
When magic hurts
Recently, I read Blood Over Bright Haven. M.L. Wang’s story is built on a magic system that almost felt like computer programming. It was complex and rule-bound, and in any other context, that might have felt sterile. But in this book, the system was the point. It shaped the world. It drove the plot. And when the reveal came (no spoilers), the heartbreak hit all the harder because the logic of the magic had prepared me for it. The system made the story hurt. That’s when you know it worked: when it wrecks you.
When magic resonates
Other times, magic doesn’t need to explain itself. In The House in the Cerulean Sea (as far as I recall), you never quite learn just how it works. It just is. But it resonates, deeply, because it mirrors what the book is really about: belonging, identity, difference. The softness of the system doesn’t weaken it—it reinforces the story’s emotional core. The fact that it makes outcasts of its wielders resonates deeply with the book’s theme. In these instances, knowing the rules is less important than knowing the meaning. The relatability of the characters and the resonance of the theme are what make it feel real.
When magic reflects something true
There’s a third way magic can feel real: when it points to something true in our own world. Sometimes the rules of the system don’t just structure the story; they echo systems we know. Power, beauty, belief, memory. In The Belles, the ability to shape physical appearance becomes a brutal metaphor for society’s obsession with image. In A Darker Shade of Magic, the magical borders mirror political ones—complete with corruption, control, and consequences. These systems feel real not because they could exist, but because we recognize what they’re telling us.
That’s the kind of magic I’m working with in my book Cinders and Stars. What its magic system reflected is something I only figured out after I wrote the book, and I tell you: I was very surprised at how it all came together. It made me see our world, and my own role in it, a little differently. And that’s where magic should happen, right? As a writer and as a reader.
Magic doesn’t have to be explained. But it does have to matter.
Magic should feel like something that leaves a mark. On the world. On the story. And, if we’re lucky, on us.
What kind of magic sticks with you long after the book ends?
Is it the kind that makes your pulse race? The kind that quietly wrecks you? Or the kind that opens your eyes to something you hadn’t noticed before?
Tell me in the comments—or come find me on Instagram/Threads. I’d love to swap recommendations (even if my TBR is already way too long).