Apr 20 2008
Magic or Madness
Reason is a better name than Logic or Rationality. So said Serafina, who champions rationality and deplores any mention of magic. Especially the witchcraft (smokes and mirrors she calls it) practiced by her own mother. But what happens when her daughter is 15?
Justine Larbalestier won an Andre Norton Award for best genre Young Adult novel in May 2007 with this tale of beautiful and fearsome magic.
Plot : The vital 15 yr old protoganist, Reason, has been told all her life that magic doesn’t exist. Suddenly her logical rational mother is dispatched to a Home for the Psychiatrically Ill and, as the story opens, Reason is being dispatched to the care of her grandmother where magic does happen.
There are many questions to be answered and each answer leads Reason to find more questions, keeping the suspense throughout the story.
This story starts, like all good stories, in media res. In the middle of things. The Greeks used this style to great advantage and so does Larbalestier. Her novel is tightly constructed with sharp short language that maintains the quick, urgent pace.
Shifts in narration among the youthful characters and a third-person narrator add suspense, and the young people are quickly and keenly characterized with an excellent sense of authenticity in their actions and language.
There are a lot of books dealing with magic around at the moment. Harry Potter made it all a little more respectable but the magic in here is fairly low-level. It serves mainly to act as an underlying sense of menace and mystery.
Along the way, Reason discovers the necessity of true friends and learns that adults are not perfect. She must find her place in the world, be it magical or mundane.
Link to Magic or Madness at Amazon
This is an excellent novel for teens, I thoroughly enjoyed it myself.
Like to shout me a cold beer?
