Magic or Madness
The Magic or Madness trilogy, Book 1
Justine Larbalestier
Razorbill
Fiction, YA Fantasy
Themes: Witches
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Description
Reason, a half-Aboriginal Australian girl, has lived her entire fifteen years on the run with her mother, Sarafina. When Sarafina was twelve, she
escaped her mother, Esmeralda, and Reason has been raised hearing grisly details of the horrid atrocities committed in her grandmother's home.
Esmeralda is a witch, and though Sarafina refuses to admit belief in magic, she lives in terror of her mother, training Reason how to resist and
escape if ever she should wind up in the woman's clutches. Reason never thought she had to worry, for they were always two steps or more ahead of her
ceaseless searches. Then, Sarafina went insane, and the courts gave Reason to Esmerelda.
The woman doesn't look like a witch, and her home isn't exactly the chamber of horrors her mother described, but Reason isn't about to trust her,
immediately searching for a way to escape. She may get away from her grandmother, but she cannot escape the destiny written in her genes. Like it or
not, Reason is about to discover that magic is real... and the fate that destroyed her mother may be waiting in her own blood to claim her.
Review
From the start, I felt a certain inexplicable repulsion to this book. Perhaps it was the excessively nasty stories Reason relates about her
grandmother, so over-the-top and paranoid that I had a tough time swallowing them. Perhaps it was how Reason and other characters were too smart to act
so stupid for so long; after crossing through a magic doorway from summer-baked Sydney into a New York City winter, it takes her, an ostensibly
intelligent girl with a knack for noticing details, several chapters to clue in that she was, in fact, in America. Perhaps it was the selfish
obnoxiousness of most of the characters, Reason included. Perhaps it was something jarring in the point-of-view switches, none of whom immersed me in
the minds of anyone I wanted to immerse in, plus the first-to-third shifts could be awkward. Or perhaps it was just a gut revulsion. Whatever the reason,
I just could not enjoy reading this.
There were some decent ideas, and it wasn't entirely bad, even if it was very obviously not an independent story but a roughly-cropped third of the
longer tale promised by the "trilogy" label. Larabalestier's magic has deeper and darker prices, methods, and undercurrents than many authors give their
magic system, so in a way I could respect that, but it's hard to respect something she's so willfully vague on explaining. The second book in the trilogy
is in the house (not purchased by me), but I don't foresee myself reading it anytime soon, if ever.