Magic or Madness
(The Magic or Madness trilogy, Book 1)
Justine Larabalestier
Firebird Fantasy
Fiction, YA Fantasy
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DESCRIPTION: Reason, a half-Aboriginal Australian girl, has lived her entire fifteen years of life 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 searchign 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 very, very 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 the awkward narrative; Reason's
chapters are all first person, while everyone else is third person. I've always been of the belief that one should pick a narrative style and stick with it. If Larabalestier
felt compelled to jump to other characters' points of views, that immediately negates using first person for any one of them (unless she uses it for all of them); cutting back
and forth didn't do me, the reader, any favors. 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.
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