The Commonweal series by Canadian author Graydon Saunders consists of five books:
- The March North
- A Succession of Bad Days
- Safely you Deliver
- Under One Banner
- A Mist of Grit and Splinters
The vast majority fantasy novels published today are implicitly anti-democratic - autocracy is taken for granted, everyone assumes that the solution to a bad society is to find a better King. Tolkien constantly obsesses over bloodlines and royal lineages.
The Commonweal, by contrast, is a strictly egalitarian society in a world of magic and eldritch horrors. In particular, the books tackle head on the problem of inequality in a world whereby, because of the existence of powerful sorcery, some people are just inherently more powerful than others.
The world in which the Commonweal finds itself is one of unimaginable horror and cruelty: the landscape is littered with vicious monsters and toxic plants, all created by long-dead sorcerers as weapons to use in wars of domination. Nearly all of the characters are descended from ancestors whose genes were meddled with, and not for benevolent purposes.
This small country is an island of peace and stability surrounded by ravenous, demon-summoning empires. It is founded on two inviolate principles: “No slavery” and “No rule by sorcerers”. However, they can’t get rid of sorcerers entirely, for without them the land would be defenseless. Instead, the laws of the Commonweal are set up to prevent sorcerers - or anyone, for that matter - from becoming too powerful.
Sorcerers may not run for political office, and must perform 5 years of community service for each 50 years of life. Farmland may not be owned by individuals but only by farming collectives. There is a cap on wealth.
The commonweal has no trading partners: the neighboring states are slave empires, and the law prohibits profiting off of the labor of slaves.
There is a central government, with a parliament, but its power is limited, focusing primarily on issues of defense and preventing excessive concentration of power. Parliament itself is governed by a magical Constitution, called “The Shape of Peace”.
Much of the action in the second and third book involves magical civil engineering - repairing dams, building canals, setting up refineries and industrial workshops, and protecting against food shortages. These kinds of things are much harder in a world where even the simple act of clearing land for farming is a deadly task requiring teams of magically protected “weeders” who cleanse the soil of diabolical invasive species and magical parasites.
Other themes in the book revolve around fine points of law - such as whether it is permitted to sorcerously transform someone, if by doing so would repair a debilitating ailment (answer: permissible in some circumstances, but a judge must decide). Or when it is permissible to use offensive magic in self-defense against an assault by another citizen.
The books are a difficult read. Everything is described obliquely; the author occasionally drops a clue that you needed to interpret text 100 pages earlier in the text. Some times I can’t even tell which character is speaking. Worse, the books are just obscure enough that there’s no community-maintained Wiki to tell me what a “thorpe” or a “gesith” is. Occasionally you need to be a super-genius to figure out what the hell is going on. Nevertheless, I’ve read the entire series five times because there are so many fresh ideas in here.