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Plot outline, and yes, it's full of spoilers. I'll try to white some of them out, but I make no promises.

So, main characters Catherine and Patrick are apprentice healers in the small and peaceful town of Algodon, until one day their master goes off to the Big City (Celerion) and never comes back. They recieve a letter from him informing them that he's probably dead (he is) which is carried by a man who has been injured (by a scary scythe monster thing). Before Catherine and Patrick can so much as call a town meeting, a random lady comes screaming through the streets going "LITTLE TIMMY GOT EVISCERATED! D: "

Little Timmy dies, and an impromptu town meeting decides that Catherine, along with... you know what, I think Anna goes too. And some other guy. 'Cause they need a guy. Anyway, they're going to Resolve the Evil- the catch? They aren't trying to save the world. Just their town. Also, it isn't evil. Just a god cursing them. So Catherine goes off questing.

But then it gets really fun. 'Cause Theif boy wanders into town, also eviscerated. No one sees him but Patrick, who manages to save his life. Theif Boy's from Celerion and... well, I don't quite know how he knew he had to leave, but he did. Methinks there's a plot point in there somewhere, just waiting to bite me in the a**. Algodon, xenophobic little thing it's become, would freak if it knew that Patrick is helping (gods save us) an outsider, so Theif Boy hides in the woods.

Meanwhile, Cathy dear gets to Celerion and meets Conceited Mage Boy when she inquires of the University of Magicalness about what the hell could possibly be going on. Said Mage Boy is an a** and flat-out refuses to help. We see amazing excess in magic use- most of the mages at ole U of M have magically colorful hair that they change with their moods, etc. Cathy's fundamentalist streak rears its ugly head and she disapproves.

Just as she leaves and goes back to Algodon (extra points if you remeber/know where I got that name) Curse Part #2 sets in and Celerion (aka Home of U of M) gets kind of invaded by ghosts. And stuff. Remember that weird city in the first Wheel of Time book? (Oh wait, there's more of them. That's just the most easily recognized one) Well, it's a bit like that. Only people are still living there. So Conceited Mage Boy shows up, demanding to know what's going on. Cathy (understandably) doesn't have a clue. Mage Boy decides to help them.

Back at home, Patrick has landed himself in a totally not anachronistic relationship with Theif Boy. No really, this is all explained by... stuff and stuff. I really do have a reason for this. It realy isn't anachronistic. It's a rather integral part of the society that it isn't. Land use and medicine an' stuff. It is, however, fluff. To the thousandth power. (Oh, don't wory- I make them pay for it later. twisted )

Anyways, Cathy gets back to town, and Anna now has a crush on Patrick! Oh, joy. That doesn't go well. (as I have a suspicion that Patrick is as gay as a day in May) There is a town meeting to decide what to do, and Cathy goes on the "I have no idea where I'm going" quest of doom with her band of adventurers.

You may notice that the rest is whited out. That is because it's all spoilers. Big time.

After not very much time lots of exciting adventures and stuff, they meet Demon. Who isn't really a demon. He's the messenger/avatar of a random god. He gives Cathy Super Special Self Destructive Magic of Ultimate Suckiness and tells them that they must find and destroy "the curse" as it exists in their town, or for their town, and that then the town will be safe so long as no one from outside of the town is there.

Cathy et all have more adventures, periodically returning to the town... only now, Mage Boy isn't allowed inside the town. Somewhere along the line, they meet the entity known as Curse Girl. Her memories are eventually proven to be false- she is the curse they have to kill. Quest guy (who went with them since the begining) has managed to fall in love with her in the meantime.

Long story short, they kill Curse Girl, sent Theif Boy packing and lord knows what happens to Mage Boy. It's one of those stories where the needs of the many really do overpower the hapiness of the few. And there are now trick answers where everything's all right in the end.

So, I keep finding myself saying or thinking "this would make a lot more sense if you knew what the country was like" and thus, I have decided to have an entire post dedicated to the country/ area. It... isn't exactly a country.

The things that really determine what it's like are:

a) Really good medicine, assisted by magic.
b) Really good farming, which doesn't use much land. Also assisted by magic.
c) Limited communications and transportation- this wasn't a priority for people to develop magic.

Because of the farming methods, well, there isn't much demand for land, and since population isn't increasing (more on that later) there aren't border disputes- in fact, there aren't even borders to dispute, because regions/ citystates/ countries are pretty far apart, although there is some interaction between them.

Each citystate is a little different, but there are some properties that they all share. They all consist of a major city surrounded by smaller farming communities, all no more than a few days travel away from the main city- Algodon is right on the edge of its citystate, and it's only about six or seven days away from Celerion. There is moderate travel between the towns and the city, although some townspeople never travel to the city and vice versa.

The cities are centers of government, research, trade, diplomacy, etc. They do, in fact, make laws, and impose some taxes, but these laws and taxes are not heavily imposed on the towns. The towns provide food to feed the cities, and they tend to be pretty uniform in size- no farmers live more than about forty five minutes from the town center.

Towns have a few citizens who don't farm- there's generally an inn with a shop for outsiders, some artisans and craftspeople, and a healer or two. They are run by a town council, which consists of any 'adult' (person over 20) who cares to participate and any skilled worker (healer or artisan) over 12 who has inheirited their master's place after said master's death. Inns are natural meeting places, just because it's convenient. There generally aren't civic buildings, statues, etc. of any kind, but there is a town square with a market, where traders from the city come to buy crops.

Social stuff now! Death rates are low, and have been for a long time, so birth rates are also low (talk to Al Gore about this one- I heard it from him). Growth rate: 0, and they want it like that. There are no benefits to growth now. To accomplish this, people are highly encouraged to not have children out of wedlock, and, to greatly reduce teen pregnancy, they encourage kids under 20 to have relationships with others of their own sex. This DOES NOT make the society liberal- they are highly conservative and will whack you over the head if you "make purple" before you're married (even dating before 20 is taboo) or if, at 20, you fail to begin searching for a marriage.

And that's all for now.

You know... I need to figure out how this magic works. Or share what I've got so far. Whatever.

So, what does it do?
Anything that might be classified as 'Charms' in the Harry Potter universe. From rain summoning to healing to changing your hair color, that's the bread and butter of this stuff. In addition, there's some summoning, but not of anything with physical form. I suppose there's a rather rigid conservation of mass going on here or something- I can't imagine them doing anything that really alters the physical world all that much. Also, things tend to... not fly much. Don't even know why I included that, really, but... no flying. And not many curses other lasting sorts of things. You don't just enchant things. You make them do something, usually for a limited ammount of time.

How would one use this magic?
Use of magic entails two things- a "call" and an "envoy". The "call" is basically a summoning of power and the "envoy" is a way to direct it. Holy Frith in a haystack, this sounds a bit like Naruto. Well... that's... probably where the similarities end, so... Yeah. The magic is centered around runes- the "call" for a simple spell would just be naming a series of runes that make up a spell. For a more complicated spell, one would write out the runes on a parchment or something, then use a "send" (a complete, simpler spell, which would destroy the parchment) to activate them. There's also a version with stones, but the sends for that have been lost. The envoy is usually merely pointing or touching the thing or person to be affected, although there are versions with arrows and other spells called "guides" and stuff.

Where does this magic come from?
Normally, the magic comes from... something like the gods. They're a bit mysterious. We never see them. We don't really understand them. Even Demon (and later Talin) isn't a god. He's just an avatar/messenger thing. Think Wicca. I don't think the gods can really affect the magic, or they do and we don't know it, for some reason. Or the whole story is about the gods doing weird s**t to the magic. There's a bit of ambiguity there.

When Demon screws with Catherine's magic, he... kind of... loops it. So, instead of using normal magic, she uses... something like her own life force. Except we're not talking glowy aura stuff. Think... blood. Sort of. She uses the magic the same (except that it's a bit harder to control) and then she dies. Or starts coughing up blood. Or starts bleeding inexplicably. And if she uses magic to heal herself... she really only ends up making it worse. The good news- she isn't cursed! The bad news- she's gonna die anyways.

Anything else.
The magic itself is colorless, tasteless, so on and so forth. The effects, however, tend to have sparkly side effects. So this does, in fact, fit into the "sparkly magic" catagory.

Oh, I totally get the WoT reference in your plot summary, even if I can't spell the city's name anymore. Aridahl or something like that. With the dagger and the treasure and the guy with no shadow. Shadar Logoth! Lord, I'm delving into some of the deepest sediments of my brain for this stuff.

That whole business with the Shadar Logoth dagger was really the only thing that made the first three books interesting for me, to be honest. >> Our library's copy of The Dragon Reborn has a permanent spine crease at the chapter where Mat gets Healed. *gnaws off her right index finger and left pinky for capitalizing the H*

...Sorry, I really am paying attention to things other than your obscure WoT references. sweatdrop

It sounds interesting! 3nodding

Sorry; no time for critique- gotta actually work on my French paper. gonk Pfft at Le Petit Prince right now.

*looks over Ysabell's shoulder in a mildly disapproving manner*

Ah, point. Carry on, then.