For the past twenty years, fantasy readers and writers have increasingly discussed magic through the language of “hard” and “soft” magic systems.
The distinction comes largely from Brandon Sanderson’s essays on magic, and it has become so widely adopted that many readers now treat it as the default way to think about fantasy.
I understand why.
The framework is useful. It gives people a shared vocabulary. It helps explain why a magic system in a role-playing game, a video game, or a progression fantasy often feels satisfying. Readers enjoy understanding the tools available to characters. They enjoy seeing clever solutions emerge from established rules.
The problem comes when the framework stops being descriptive and starts becoming prescriptive.
Over time, the language of hard and soft magic has created a hierarchy. Magic that operates according to explicit rules is often treated as more sophisticated, more developed, or more believable. Magic that retains mystery is frequently discussed as though it occupies a lower rung on the ladder.
Yet some of the richest magical traditions in fantasy operate according to very different principles.
In Earthsea, magic is tied to true names. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, magic emerges from folklore, history, scholarship, and forgotten traditions. In Tolkien’s work, magic carries spiritual and moral significance. In each case, the power of the magic comes from what it means within the world and the story.
These systems possess depth, consistency, and internal logic. They shape cultures, histories, beliefs, and characters. They feel ancient and real.
They simply invite the reader to engage with them differently.
One of the great pleasures of fantasy is encountering something larger than human understanding. Many mythologies, religions, and folk traditions revolve around powers that can be glimpsed but never fully grasped. Their significance lies partly in their mystery.
Fantasy inherits much of that tradition.
When every magical phenomenon is catalogued, measured, quantified, and explained, magic begins to resemble engineering. It becomes a branch of fictional physics. That approach can produce excellent stories, but it represents one tradition among many rather than the destination toward which all fantasy naturally progresses.
As fantasy readers, we often talk about immersion. Yet genuine immersion does not always come from knowing every rule. Sometimes it comes from sensing that there are truths beneath the surface that nobody fully understands.
That is largely how I approach magic in the Ravenglass Universe.
The setting contains rules. Ravenglass behaves in particular ways. Blood can awaken its power. Tears can shape it. The Shadow Realm follows principles of its own. Certain actions carry predictable consequences.
Beneath the stories, there is a coherent system.
The characters, however, only possess fragments of that knowledge.
A Guardian scholar might understand one aspect of ravenglass. An assassin might know another. A wyvern might possess memories stretching back centuries. Ancient records preserve clues. Myths preserve others. Some pieces have been lost. Some have been deliberately hidden. Some are misunderstood.
fAs a result, the people living within the world experience magic in the same way real societies experience history, religion, or science. Knowledge accumulates unevenly. Competing explanations coexist. Certainty remains elusive.
That uncertainty creates wonder.
When Ragnar encounters ravenglass for the first time, he does not receive a rulebook. When Soren learns to forge a blade, he discovers one small corner of a much larger reality. When Adelinde uncovers forbidden histories, she finds evidence of a force beyond human understanding.
The mystery itself becomes part of the setting.
I sometimes wonder whether terms like hard magic and soft magic have outlived their usefulness.
They encourage us to sort magic into categories rather than asking what role it serves within a story. They turn a wide spectrum of approaches into a binary choice. They also carry unintended value judgements that place certain traditions above others.
Fantasy has always been broad enough to contain all of these approaches.
Some stories thrive on clearly defined magical tools. Others thrive on folklore, symbolism, myth, religion, dream logic, or half-forgotten truths. Some combine several traditions at once.
The question is never whether a magic system is hard or soft.
The question is whether it creates the experience the story needs.
For many fantasy readers, part of the appeal of magic lies in the feeling that there is always another layer beneath the one we can see. A forgotten name. A lost story. A secret buried in an old chronicle. A truth that remains just beyond reach.
That sense of mystery has carried fantasy for centuries.
I suspect it will continue to do so long after the current labels have faded from fashion.
