The Price of Magic

I once found myself on a panel at an SF con, listening to a famous author talk about creating magical systems.  He said that magic always has to have some cost attached to it, in energy, in money, in years of study and meditation—something that kept it hard enough so that not just everyone could do it.  That it was important, in both the laws of physics terms and of creating good fiction, that magic not be “free.”  Being someone who is willing to argue (politely—honest!) with even famous authors, I pointed out that while I didn’t necessarily disagree with him—in fact, I was inclined to agree—in Harry Potter, magic is pretty much free.  You’re born with the ability to use magic, and while some training is required, it’s no harder than school is for everyone else—and let’s face it, Defense Against the Dark Arts is a lot more relevant than your average history class.  So it seems clear that you can write wildly successful fiction where magic has no cost. 

On the other hand, last year I read Daughter of Smoke and Bone.  And after I got over being blown away by the way Laini Taylor uses language, I was promptly blown away by her world building.  (Spoiler alert—and if you haven’t read this book already you really should!)  In the world of the chimaera and the seraphim the price of magic is pain.  This is about as far from free as you can get!  And if she’d just left it there, magic probably wouldn’t be common enough to matter very much, because hardly anyone would use it.  However, she went that one fantastic step further and made it so it didn’t have to be your pain that fueled the magic.  That one simple twist made the seraphims’ use of the chimaera as pain slaves almost inevitable, and the chimaera rebellion equally inevitable.  In fact, the entire war that has utterly shaped both those societies, and forms the core of the story in the way it divides the hero and heroine, springs completely from the horrifically high price placed on magic. 

Although Laini Taylor blew me away with the system she created, I have to admit, in my own books I’m usually closer to the J.K. Rowling model.  It’s not always exactly the same, but in my stories magic is usually some kind of natural force, that a person with a gift for it is somehow able to channel and shape to their will, though it usually requires study and practice. 

So how do you handle magic in your world?  Charge a high price, or give it away for free? And what kind of system do you prefer in the novels you read?