Image via Luo Di Cheng Qiu
Like so many previous years in my life, I promised myself that during 2025, I was going to read more. While picking up my first book of the year, Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy, I ended up going on a journey that rekindled my love of fandom, and my curiosity for fantasy.
I’ve been going to the gym for the past month. It’s something I’ve never put any serious thought behind. The last time I had access to a gym, I was a Freshman in college and was much more interested in my social life and education than my cardio health.
However, at the age of 32, some things can no longer be avoided. Even I know when to admit defeat, and my tap out was no longer being able to climb the stairs in my house without huffing and puffing.
To make the journey to Gym Rat more bearable, I decided to make use of the backlog of Audible credits I’ve accumulated in the past year. You see, I’ve had this issue with books since about 2020, where every time I try something new, I can’t get into the story. Errors on $30 hardbacks, narratives that just sell spice with no actual story, and flimsy main characters made me adverse to anything new.
However, after my sixth relisten of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in a year, I knew it was time to at least try something. I hopped on the Audible app and looked at the new releases under the LGBTQA+ tag, and spotted Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy. A breakout novel shelved as an adult fantasy, with an interesting premise.
To Fanfic or Not to Fanfic – That is the Question
Sorcery and Small Magics has a slow start. Leovander Loveage is a 20-something-year-old young man attending a magical university of sorts and is everything you love in a destructive hero. He’s charismatic, charming, hates himself, drinks too much, and drags everyone around him down on his hellbent path to ruin his own life.
After a quick breakdown with little backstory on the world setting and what he attempted to do at school, he is thrown into the path of his rule-following arch-rival and handsome heartthrob Sebastian Grimm.
After a little mishap in class binds them together magically, the two are forced to go on an adventure to break a curse so they can go back to their lives of trying not to be involved with magic (Leo), and trying to be very good at magic and get a seat in a magical government(?) system to effect change (Sebastian).
I’ll admit, I had absolutely no idea what was going on at all until around chapter 8, and I really only stayed invested because the reader of this audiobook, Ciaran Saward, is a vocal wizard. But as I continued through the story, I found myself at odds with my opinion of it.
I wanted to like the story. I wanted to fall in love with the world, and the characters, and what they were trying to do. I found myself curious about the world, but left starving for details about literally anything as the author strung foundational elements along as critical plot points.
Which led me to a suspicion that crept up into the back of my mind like a fly in the kitchen constantly buzzing until you try to smack it.
Was this book a fanfiction?
It’s not uncommon these days for Ao3 authors to take a popular fanfiction, slap some new names over characters and notable places, and then send the draft off to publishers. In fact, part of my distrust of the publishing industry is exactly that. I’ve picked far too many books up only to know exactly which pairing the book is actually written for after a chapter or two.
Winter’s Orbit? Kirk and Spock fanfiction was my best guess. Anything by Ali Hazelwood? Reylo. Bonds of Brass? Poe and Finn. In this post-Fifty Shades of Grey world, I squint at almost everything I pick up with suspicion, and if it has a BookTok recommend, I just don’t even bother.
The only thing worse than being tricked into buying fanfiction is then being assaulted with a book that is mostly badly written “spice”. Let’s call it what it is folks. Not Romantasy. Erotica.
So I had my suspicions about Sorcery and Small Magics because it was hitting all the marks. The author presented the world like it was a dollhouse. You were supposed to already know everything about it, so nothing was explained. This is very common in fanfiction, as the writer is using a pre-made setting and characters to act out scenarios they want to see. (I know this, I was once a prolific Wolfstar fanfic writer.)
When the setting is then converted into an “original” idea, big chunks of continuity are missing because the writer never put them in to begin with. Sorcery and Small Magics‘ world makes no sense. Why is there this government? Why is the world surrounded by dark forests filled with monsters? How did people even settle it?
Those questions are never answered, so you spend much of the book grasping at what you are meant to be visualizing.
Then there are the characters. Leo and Sebastian both suffer from “renamed character syndrome”. They possess a handful of very obvious stereotypes, but their depth beyond that is minimal, and their backstories are actually held until nearly the end of the book to keep you reading, rather than having their motives and desires properly explained to propel the plot forward.
Which leads us to the final tell. Sorcery and Small Magics doesn’t have a plot. For the first book in a trilogy, the entire story is “whoops I cursed my friend and I think I want to kiss him.” That’s it. 400 pages of being strung along because, primarily, you want to know why Leo’s magic doesn’t work. Once you know why, there is literally nothing else interesting to keep you reading.
So I caved, and I went to look at the reviews on Goodreads. This is something I try not to do anymore thanks to review bombing. But in doing so, I ended up down a rabbit hole.
What on Earth is Mo Dao Zu Shi?
At first, I was certain that Sorcery and Small Magics was probably a Draco/Harry fanfiction with exceptional editing to get away from Harry Potter stereotypes.
Magic is interesting in this world, you have Casters, who can cast spells, and Scrivers, who can write spells but not cast them. Leo is a Scriver, and Sebastian is a Caster. Magic is written on pieces of paper, and then the caster reads them to activate the spell.
Leo’s magic is “broken”, so his written spells tend to backfire, creating horrible monstrosities.
However, when I started looking at the reviews, there were several that caught my attention and brought me away from my Harry Potter hypothesis. Many different readers cited that the story was very similar to something called Mo Dao Zu Shi, or Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
Many of you may also know it by its Chinese television adaption The Untamed.
Now, I’d heard of Mo Dao Zu Shi, but in the way that you look at something on a bookstore shelf and think, “gosh that looks pretty, I bet I’d love it”. I’d also seen cosplayers at conventions, not putting two and two together.
The most important thing to note is that The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and its many adaptations are enormously popular.
That night, I finished Sorcery and Small Magics, and then started the first novel of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
I Tripped and I am Still Falling Into Mo Dao Zu Shi’s Beautiful World
Now, I am not going to say that Sorcery and Small Magics is outright fanfiction, but the similarities are painfully striking. The characters, the slow-burn romance, the way magic is cast for the most part, the world, the monsters – it’s just so close.
The big difference, however, is that Mo Dao Zu Shi isn’t missing pieces.
Wei Wuxian is the Leo character. He’s charismatic, funny, and gets up to trouble. Despite this, he has a good heart and genuinely cares about everyone around him, sometimes to a fault. Lan Wangji is our Sebastian. He’s a stickler for the rules, has great pride in his work, and wants to do his family proud by upholding the expectations of his job.
Both Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are cultivators. I am still learning about this type of magic system, but cultivators are magic users who can use magic born from inside them to fight monsters. This can be channeled through written spells, gestures, or musical instruments.
Did I forget to mention that in Sorcery and Small Magics, Leovander uses a violin to unconventionally cast magic? And that when he and Sebastian cast together, Leo playing and Sebastian singing, their magic is amplified? Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji also have this ability. In Mo Dao Zu Shi, it is called being cultivation partners.
However, where I struggled to understand what was happening in Sorcery and Small Magics, I was sucked down and overwhelmed by Mo Dao Zu Shi. The characters all have backstories that yank at your heart. Wei Wuxian’s battle to come into himself despite his struggles left me in tears, and Lan Wangji’s love for Wei Wuxian despite it all had me shaking and speechless.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation knocked my knees out from under me, and I gladly hit the pavement that was the emotional aftershocks of the story.
I Wish I Could Have Read Mo Dao Zu Shi First
One of my biggest regrets is not picking up Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation sooner. It is such a beautiful story, and the anime and live-action adaptations are just as lovely.
I have no proof that Sorcery and Small Magics is a fanfic beyond my own suspicions, but here is what makes me sad about this.
The world needs more excellent stories like Mo Dao Zu Shi. While it is wonderful to take inspiration from things, bring in culture, and use ideas to build your own, we are in a time where almost everything feels like a spiced-up version of something better that came before.
Fandom, fanfiction, and fanart are all inspired by beautiful, original works that bring communities together. If we don’t create new things, things of our own, as creatives, we won’t ever be able to make communities like that.
And I am not talking about droves of loyal TikTok and Instagram followers.
I am talking about the power to inspire others to create. To weave a story so beautiful you leave someone devastated. Anne McCaffery, Ursula Le Guin, Diana Wynne Jones. These writers wrote stories that set the foundations for so many fans.
I got my start writing fanfiction, but after a point, I realized I wanted to write something for others that brings as much joy as Dragonriders of Pern brought me. However, I didn’t want to write what McCaffrey wrote. I wanted to write my own beautiful world, with my own characters and my own magic. I’m in the process of doing that.
It takes so much more time and energy than copying a prebuilt world and renaming the characters.
Reading Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation reminded me why I want to write so badly, and why writing my own world is so important to me.
Someday, I want to leave my readers completely breathless. Not because of “spice”, but because the adventure they just went on was so satisfying and gripping they were emotionally running to the conclusion just to see what would happen.
I desperately wish Sorcery and Small Magics had offered that to me, because I genuinely think that is what Maiga Doocy wanted, but didn’t quite manage to deliver.
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