The first in a trilogy (reviews of the rest of the series will follow shortly), Magic or Madness tells the story of Australian teen Reason Cansino. Reason, named to celebrate logic and rationality, has spent her life roaming the small towns and bush of Australia with her mother Sarafina, never staying anywhere long in case her grandmother finds them. All her life Reason has been told that her grandmother is evil. But Sarafina, always eccentric, slides further into madness, and is institutionalised. Esmerelda is her only living relative, and - fearful - Reason has to live with her, with only her ammonite fossil for protection.
Mere is strange, and her house is frightening - the more Reason looks, the more afraid she becomes. Why has she put black feathers under Reason's pillow? Does she practice magic, even though Sarafina always made a point of telling Reason that there was no such thing? And why is there a dead cat buried in the basement? It is this last discovery that sends Reason fleeing - through a magic door that connects Esemerelda's house in Sydney to a street in New York city, where she meets Jay-Tee, who has magic of her own.
The story intersperses chapters from Reason's point of view with chapters from both Jay-Tee and Tom, another fifteen-year-old, who lives next to Mere and whose magic manifests in clothes design. I particularly like the way Reason perceives magic as maths - she has a particular affinity for the Fibonacci sequence, where each number is the product of the two previous numbers.
Magic or Madness is an interesting addition to the world of young adult fantasy, and 'm interested to see how this story will play out over the rest of the trilogy. - Alex
No comments:
Post a Comment