I wrote a fantasy novel. The premise is that magic isn't mysterious power handed down from gods or inherited through bloodlines. It's natural philosophy, the systematic study of reality's computational substrate. You discover it the same way you discover physics: by paying attention, forming hypotheses, and testing them.
Duulak is a theoretical thaumaturge. He's working out the mathematical foundations that make magic possible, the way a physicist works out the math behind why things fall. The magic system has rules, and those rules have consequences, and the consequences are where the story lives.
I wanted to write fantasy for people who think magic should be rigorous without being sterile. Rigor and wonder aren't opposed. If anything, the constraints make the interesting stuff more interesting.
