Though Barbie’s success may feel unprecedented in our current cultural moment, the story of Barbie herself that Gerwig chooses to tell—that of a doll’s decision to become a real woman—actually has thousands of years of precedent in a story model that pervades multiple genres of film and literature, though is especially at home in tales of magical realism and science fiction: the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.

When we read about magic of any genre, we are always implicitly confronting what we do and don’t expect, what we consider to be normal. So, let’s talk a little about what is magic, what is magical about necromancy, and how Muir’s Locked Tomb series incorporates the inherent strangeness of magic as a concept into its themes.