Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier

[lightreads]

Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Disappointing. Larbalestier's Liar -- when it impressed and when it didn't -- that book was interesting. It was thinking and messing with the boundaries of young adult fiction and just doing stuff.

This book is none of the above. It's just a couple hundred pages in which stuff happens. And I was frankly confused, because this is a universe where people -- women, mostly -- have a choice between the assumption of power and death on one hand, or eventual mental illness (unspecified) on the other. Magic or madness, right. And I kept twitching, because that's difficult ground right there, a lot of things can go really, really wrong, and I kept waiting for it to happen. And it kept not happening. Not because Larbalestier was doing a really good job with it, but because she wasn't doing anything with it. Like, at all. Stuff just happened to a bunch of young people, and then it was over.

Does the rest of the trilogy deliver . . . anything?




View all my reviews

Comments

[jadelennox]

As with the end of Liar (though less trainwrecky), at the end of the trilogy you find yourself thinking a bit of "So. That happened?"

One thing about Larbalestier, she never delivers conventional plots. There's teen pregnancies and complex teen/adult interactions and some weird-as-hell comings-of-age, and while I don't know if I like the resolution, I don't find it at all boring.

[cyphomandra]

I thought the Magic series ran out of story significantly before it ran out of book, so unless you're a fanatic completionist I probably wouldn't bother.

(and possibly this is just me, but none of the Larbelestier books I've read have had proper endings!)