Magic or Madness

Book 1: Magic or Madness
Book 2: Magic Lessons
Book 3: Magic's Child

Razorbill (2006)
ISBN: 0-14-300402-6
$17.95
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Reviewed by Alexandra Pierce, February 2007

Reason (it’s prettier than Logic or Rationality, apparently) has lived her 15 years in a very atypical environment, partly because that environment has changed at least every 5 months, if not more often. Her mother, Sarafina, has kept her moving constantly so that they won’t ever be found by her mother, Esmerelda: a terrifying woman who believes she is a witch and does unspeakable things in the name of magic. They’ve only lived in the Outback, they’ve never made friends, and Reason has only spent two months in school, all in an attempt to keep away from Esmerelda.

The book, of course, opens with Reason travelling in a taxi with Esmerelda. Sarafina has been admitted to a mental institute. The house is not nearly so dark and scary as Sarafina has led Reason to believe. She meets Tom, who lives next door and seems cool. Reason is trying her very best not to talk to Esmerelda, and definitely not eat any of her food, as promised to her mother. Things start to get even more interesting, though, when Reason finds a key and that it fits into the back door. Stepping through, she discovers that - rather than the back yard with the Morton Bay fig - she is in New York: winter, rather than summer. There, she meets Jay-Tee, who seems to have a rather strange relationship with a man called Jason Blake.

Most of the book is written in the first person from Reason’s point of view. We learn a lot about her, of course, and we see her progression from being sure of herself and violently anti-Esmerelda to being very confused about the world and where she fits in. Interestingly, though, Larbalestier also provides the reader with an insight into Tom’s and Jay-Tee’s worlds - both of these, however, are written in the third person, so it’s not quite so personal as with Reason. The advantage, of course, is that the reader gets to see Reason’s actions from the outside, and learn details about her friends well before she does; it’s a very privileged position. These multiple perspectives work, in general, because the three characters are actually quite similar - they’re all about the same age, for a start - and although the reader is privileged, you’re still not omniscient. There are still a lot of issues and problems that are as opaque to the reader as to Reason, which of course leads to (enjoyable) increased tension.

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the complicated view of magic it presents - not easy, not simplistic, and not even something everyone wants (yes, magic is real). This makes the world quite realistic: much as I’ve always liked the idea of magic, I think the idea of actually being able to do it in the ‘real world’ (as opposed to some place where everyone can do it) would be totally terrifying. A lot seems to happen in the 270 pages, but it’s really only a week. Filling up all that space is a fair bit of action, a good amount of dialogue, and a degree of introspection that’s only to be expected when your world is being turned on its head. The one whinge I have about Magic or Madness is that Reason is a bit immature for a 15 year old. That said, she has moved around an insane amount, and has barely spent any time with kids her own age, so I suppose a certain naivety is plausible. I would have thought, though, that she would be more mature than others, having had to live on her wits a bit more. This, though, is a minor issue.

Highly recommended for young adult readers, and old adults who like the genre. The sequel is Magic Lessons, and the third in the trilogy - Magic’s Child - is due out March 1. I’m really looking forward to them.

Razorbill (2006)
ISBN:014300557X
$19.95
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Reviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts, Oct 2006

This second volume of Justine Larbalestier’s cross-cultural coming-of-age YA fantasy trilogy is just as interesting as the first. The many readers who enjoyed Magic or Madness should all be pleased with Magic Lessons, a rare example of a middle book in a trilogy that effectively advances both the story and back story, without sagging from lack of resolution.

In Magic or Madness, 15 year old Reason Cantino was devastated when her mother was shut away in a mental asylum, leaving Reason in the care of Esmeralda, the grandmother she had been taught all her life to fear and despise. She also met Tom, the boy next door whose mother is also in an asylum, and who adores Esmeralda. Reason discovered a door that led from her grandmother’s summery Sydney kitchen directly on to a snowy New York street, and there she met vulnerable, feisty magic user Jay-Tee, and the sinister magician who was drinking her dry. Reason also learned that she and her family are all cursed with magic and madness, and that the magician who had such a hold over Jay-Tee was actually Reason’s own grandfather. The key to Larbalestier’s magic system is that those with magical ability are doomed to burn up their life at a frightening rate if they use their powers (rarely surviving their teens), or go insane (just like Tom’s and Reason’s mothers) if they do not use their powers. While these rules were explained to Reason in the first book, it is only here in Magic Lessons that the real ramifications are felt. There are only two ways to put off the inevitable: stealing the magic of others, shortening their life and lengthening your own (as Reason’s grandfather did), or eking your power out by such small increments that you can evade madness and extend your life to the maximum length. There are obviously moral problems with the former option, and the latter is far more difficult than it sounds…

Esmeralda, Reason’s forty-something grandmother, has survived for so long by choosing that latter route, and this is the core of the lessons she is trying to convey to her teen protegées: Reason, Jay-Tee and Tom in Magic Lessons. The title of the book is ironic, as it becomes clear that Esmeralda herself has a lot to learn about her own magic, and the rules she so desperately clings to. Her emotional immaturity is revealed throughout Magic Lessons, working as a good counterpoint to the “growing up” theme of the books. Meanwhile, Esmeralda’s three students, having the self control of, well, teenagers, completely fail to follow her strict directives to economise on their magic use.

While Tom loses some of his innocence and blind trust in Esmeralda, Jay-Tee faces a more dire danger. Reason’s sinister grandfather sapped Jay-Tee of most of her magic, and now she faces a terrible choice - to replenish what she lost by taking it from someone else, or to die at fifteen. Meanwhile, Reason is drawn back to that mysterious door and finds herself stranded in New York, in the company of Jay-Tee’s sexy brother Danny, and under attack from a mysterious elderly relative. How is it that this old man has evaded the magic-or-madness curse for so long?

Even as Larbalestier drives home the dangers and costs of her unrepentantly harsh magic system, she performs a complex juggling act, offering hope to her protagonists, and potential solutions to their terrible situation, and then adding extra layers of nasty consequences and possibilities for them to struggle with. I love the progression of Esmeralda, a character whose morals are so grey and complex that we never know exactly what she will choose to do next, or where her loyalties are. I also sympathised strongly with poor old Tom, who seems doomed to be the boy-next-door for the rest of his life. I found Reason more irritating and Jay-Tee less irritating in this book than in the previous, an odd juxtaposition that may have something to do with Reason’s overall isolation in this book - she had her own plotline that at times felt separate from where the real action was, even though she is, on paper at least, the central character. I hope that her disconnection with the other characters is relaxed a bit in book three, as she spent a little too much of this book inside her own head. Overall, though, Magic Lessons is a taut, angsty read with a great page-turning pace to it, and is further proof that all the interesting genre books are being written for Young Adults right now. My biggest complaint is that the titles of this trilogy are descending into mediocrity, from the brilliant and evocative Magic or Madness to the ordinary (however accurate) Magic Lessons, and the quite dreadfully mundane Magic’s Child, due out in March 2007. Luckily, Larbalestier should have enough willing fans who can overlook the title in order to snatch up Book 3 and greedly consume the climaxes and conclusions for Reason and the gang.

The lesson you will take away from this book is that magic hurts. There are countless stories that tell us magical power should come with a price (and even more countless stories that don’t), but it’s rare to find a story that demonstrates that price in such a realistic and stomach-wrenching manner as Larbalestier does in Magic Lessons. You have to respect an author who makes her characters suffer quite so miserably, and yet still keeps the reader glued to the page.

Razorbill (2006)
ISBN:014300557X
$19.95
Buy this book
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Reviewed by Alexandra Pierce, March 2007

In this sequel to Magic or Madness, we experience the next week in Reason Cansino’s life after she finds out that she is magic and that her grandmother’s backdoor leads to New York, where her evil grandfather lives. This door all of a sudden starts heaving, and it sounds like something very, very large is trying to get through. This, of course, scares the pants off everyone - they, not unnaturally, think it’s Jason Blake coming to get them (like the bogey man, which is how at least Jay-Tee thinks of him). After various attempts at stopping this, and a few weird things coming through, Reason actually gets sucked through and lands in New York (again). There she discovers that it is not Jason Blake, after all, but a very strange creature indeed… whose magical pattern is a lot like that of a Cansino. Very weird, very disturbing. Adventures in New York ensue for Reason, sagas of a different sort in Sydney for those left behind.

As with Magic or Madness, Magic Lessons is written from three vantage points. Reason - ostensibly the main character, since things definitely revolve around her - gets to speak in her own voice, and spends much of the story off on her own tangent in New York. Jay-Tee and Tom are given their own chapters (in third person), although it felt like fewer than they got in the first book. I got a bit annoyed with Tom during this book; there were times when he just seemed like a whinger. This does, though, capture the voice and attitude of some 15-year-old boys I have known. One thing that this book does really well is capture the relationships between the three teenagers. They’re not always happy with each other, they don’t always treat each other well, and they’re often confused about motives - their own and others’. The one thing that is really missing is raging hormones and temper tantrums, although I guess in only a fortnight they might not occur.

Esmerelda, the grandmother and ostensible Wicked Witch of Reason’s childhood, gets a much greater role in this book: she is a fascinating and complex character. It would have been easy to make her all sweetness and light, and therefore make Sarafina (Reason’s mother) a liar as well as a fruitcake. Instead, although she often works from honest and even altruistic motives, they are never quite clear-cut. There are moments when it looks like Wicked Witch Syndrome really is going to break out, and with Larbalestier I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. This fuzzy moral universe is realistic and engaging.

Larbalestier is pretty nasty to her characters. They get bruises and concussion; they get betrayed; they nearly die of magical reasons. I really like this - what, for want of a better word, I would call realism. When she says that magic is dangerous, and that your options are dying when your magic runs out or going mad from not using it, she really means it. This gritty side of magic is something I appreciated in the first story, too. I can only hope that the third doesn’t introduce some cop-out. It’s clear that Reason is going to be looking for some sort of ‘cure’ for this disease called magic, but I can only pray that Larbalestier stays true to the world she has created.

One of the things that bugged me about this book was its internal repetition. Yes, Reason, we know that you don’t trust Esmerelda; we know that you’re totally freaked out by magic and the whole being-transported-to-New-York thing, too. You’ve told us often enough. The repetition doesn’t happen quite often enough to be obsessive, and obsession isn’t part of Reason’s character (nor anyone else’s) - it’s just as if Larbalestier doesn’t trust her audience quite enough to remember pertinent details. I can appreciate this sentiment, but I think she is seriously underestimating the capacity of the young adult audience to recall important things.

The other thing that got to me was some of the slang used. A long time ago, when I was at school, I will admit to having used the term “der-brain”; primary school, not secondary. This is clearly one of the risks an author runs in trying to make their language contemporary and ‘cool’: they are likely to be running several variations behind by the time they write it, and even more by the time it goes to publication. Fortunately for Larbalestier, this is the only word that was sour to my ears, but it definitely made me squirm every time she used it.

This is a riveting and engaging book. And, once you’ve read the ending, like me you will likely be desperate to get hold of Magic’s Child to see exactly how the characters deal with the rather major issue thrown up in the last couple of pages… There’s nothing quite like a cliffhanger!

Razorbill (2007)
ISBN:1595140646
US$11.55
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Reviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts, Jan 2007

Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness trilogy was one of the most promising debuts to launch amidst the huge, high-quality YA wave that has swept through the publishing industry in the last few years. The first two books in the trilogy dealt with magic in a refreshingly down-to-earth manner, along with three very believable teenage protagonist voices and an entertaining cross-cultural gimmick, complete with US and Australian language and spelling differences.

Best of all, Larbalestier presented a rare unromanticised magic system - indeed, the first book, Magic or Madness, introduced a relentlessly cruel magical system whereby the rare people born with magical ability have a limited life span intrinsically linked to their limited magical reserves: when they have used up all their magic, they will die. Worse, they can’t choose not to use magic, or they will go insane. The fifteen-year-old protagonists are faced with a terrible life choice: magic or madness? The second book in the trilogy, Magic Lessons, explored several loopholes in this harsh magical system, offering up two very real alternatives: to steal the magic of others, thereby shortening their life to prolong your own, and then the strange Cansino family magic that Reason, the central protagonist, is gifted with at a dark stage in her own life. The Cansino magic seemed seeded to give the author an “out,” so as to end her story without littering the streets with dead teenagers. However convenient this new magic appeared to be in Book 2, a significant portion of Book 3 is devoted to the author saying “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” as the Cansino magic proves to be just as dangerous and problematic and cruel as the common-or-garden variety.

Fans of the first two books will be pleased to hear that Magic’s Child does everything that the third book of a trilogy should do, and then some. Minor themes and characters from the first two books are developed in major ways; the unique magical system is expanded dramatically in all directions; and the reader makes the very important discovery that there is more than one magic door in the world.

The three teenage protagonists and the various family members orbiting them (mostly magical or mad, or both) are brought to various levels of resolution and conclusion. There’s a new romance which is rather more satisfying than those previously explored, and the true nature of magic (or rather, its effect on people) is explored.

I really enjoyed all three of the main characters rather more in this book than in the previous two, possibly because there seemed to be more focus on characterisation in the story. Jay-Tee undergoes a life-altering experience that leaves her a far nicer and more thoughtful person, Tom gets to make some really strong character decisions (some of which I railed against, though I eventually accepted that he knew what he was doing - sort of), and Reason both embraces and rejects an incredible amount of power, becoming something close to a god, but also deals with the more human concerns of her relationships with the various members of her messy, magical family tree, and comes to terms with her new pregnancy. I was particularly pleased with the returned focus on her mathematical abilities, which seemed largely forgotten in the second book. I really believed that Reason was obsessively attached to numbers and mathematical sequences, and loved the way that she explained and expressed her magic through this uncanny ability of her.

Another element of Magic’s Child that worked really effectively was the speedy passage of time. I was (like Reason) shocked when the visit from the social worker revealed that the events of the previous two action-packed novels had covered less than two weeks (a weird kind of book lag, since I read the first one well over a year ago). The startling efficiency of the magical transport between New York and Sydney was put into proper perspective by Danny’s long flight “the long way around,” which made me impatiently count the hours to figure out when he would turn up. This created a nice counterpoint with the tension of the magic system, and the constant reminder that each of the characters had a devastatingly short lifespan.

Magic’s Child, like the other two books in Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness trilogy, is one of those clever novels that, because it is so easy and enjoyable to read, might fool you into thinking it is slight when it is actually rich with dark ideas and chewy themes. The series is also great entry level speculative fiction, heartily recommended as a way to introduce non-fantasy readers into the genre.

Razorbill (2007)
ISBN:1595140646
US$11.55
Preorder this book
Go back to Reviews page
Reviewed by Alexandra Pierce, March 2007

This is a fitting end to the Magic or Madness trilogy. It ties up loose ends, resolves issues, but is a story of its own as well. It picks up the day after Magic Lessons stops: Reason is two days pregnant with Danny’s child, and is also full of the weird Cansino magic that seems to mean magic can be used as much as you like without the problems attendant on such use in this world - that it burns through your life at a prolific rate. As an additional complication (like it was needed), the social worker finally turns up at Esmerelda’s house, to see how Reason is coping with living with her grandmother. Reason is bruised, Esmerelda isn’t home, but - from the social worker’s perspective - some American girl and the boy next door are both there, also with wounds. I would imagine that it’s probably the sort of situation that gives social workers a bit of a turn.

Once again, Larbalestier uses the multiple perspectives trick, and this time the issues the three teenagers face are more distinctly individual. While they share some of the major issues, the smaller, more personal issues assume more importance, especially for Jay-Tee and Tom. Jay-Tee has to cope with the fact that her magic - and therefore life - is seriously depleted, despite having taken magic from Tom a few days before. Tom is trying to figure out how to tell his sister about magic, and whether there is a God. They both have to deal with the changes to Reason, and the consequences of them both for her and for them. Reason, of course, is going through the most changes, and has to deal with the most serious issues. I actually don’t think the pregnancy is dealt with quite as seriously as it might have been. For most of the story, of course, the baby is barely an embryo, but still you’d think that being pregnant at 15 would cause a bit more concern than it does. At any rate, Reason is pregnant and also seems to be changing into something more than human: she’s not eating, she is glowing, and she is getting pulled between two different worlds.

In a strange way, not much seems to happen in Magic’s Child, especially at the start. There’s a lot of muddling around doing ordinary things, thinking about magic and love and the world generally. This works, because by the third book you’ve got a personal attachment to the characters (or I did, anyway), so seeing into their life when they’re not actively fighting Jason Blake, for example, is quite nice. Eventually, the action picks up when Reason goes to find her mother to help her, and discovers that she is no longer at the Kalder Park hospital. There then ensues a chase to find her, and everything eventually comes to a head; finally, the Cansino family finds some resolution.

With Jay-Tee’s firm conviction that Reason would manage to ‘cure’ them, and the Cansino magic seeming to offer some sort of Get out of Jail Free Card, it seemed possible that Larbalestier was going to cop out in the end, and find a very convenient loophole out of her madness or magic dichotomy. Fortunately, I was proved wrong in my suspicion - in fact, I think Larbalestier outdid herself in the resolution of the issue. It made a lot of sense, and dealt with some of the broader issues surrounding magic use - but not too neatly.

The fact that this trilogy takes place over less than a month (basically) is one of the appeals of it - you don’t pick up the next book and discover that three years have elapsed. I wondered, at the end of Magic’s Child, whether the series could have been condensed into two - or even one - books. I’ve decided now that the trilogy works because there is a definite issue or enemy to be faced in each book, which - although connected - are quite distinct. That said again, I do think the books could each have been shorter. There was an annoying amount of angsty repetition of issues, problems, and worries - especially from Reason. I understand she was worried about lots of things, but as a reader I am actually capable of remembering them - I don’t need the constant reminder!

The three main characters of Reason, Jay-Tee and Tom are all developed nicely through the series - I got genuinely involved in their trials and tribulations, concerned with their problems and rejoiced when Larbalestier actually allowed them to have good moments. Other characters did not get quite such a good deal. Esmerelda gets a good run in Magic Lessons, but other than that we don’t learn much about her. The other supporting characters - Danny, Jason Blake, and Sarafina basically - were, to me, two-dimensional. They don’t get much page-time, so this is probably unsurprising.

In general, this is a great series of books. They are not challenging to read, but they do present some challenging and interesting ideas. Definitely recommended for young adult readers, and older adults who like entering these sorts of fantastic worlds.