magic or madness trilogy

I’ve just finished reading my friend Justine’s first trilogy, Magic or Madness – Young Adult Fiction – and it’s great. Mostly intended for teens (without condescending to them), and widely read by adults — her husband, an old friend of my wife’s, Scott, has been on the NYT bestseller list a few times – I’ve been enjoying YAF since the two of them introduced me to the genre.

spoiler warning

The basic premise is simple in that “clear and easy to understand, but I never would have thought of that and it’s so cool” kind of way. Here it is: magic (for those who have it), tho wondrous, drains your life any time you use it – most magic folk consider themselves extremely lucky if they reach the age of forty; but if you don’t use it, prolonging your life, you go mad. Oh, and you can steal magic from others, shortening their lives while making your own longer.
As you can imagine, this creates all kinds of interesting (and horrible) relationships, especially among magic friends and family, and we follow 15-year-old Reason Cansino over the course of (I think it’s about) 2 weeks, from her discovery of magic, her learning how to use it, her wielding of massive amounts of power, her unfolding of the lies and deceit in her family because of (and through) magic, and finally the destruction of magic (at least across the hundreds of living magic-wielders in her own family).

Aside from being well-written, surprising, suspenseful and fun, the final book left me in awe of just how much Justine trusts her readers – children and adults alike. Cory Doctorow (boing boing) called the ending very risky, “really disturbing and thought-provoking… a direction I hadn’t expected and that has me thinking about it still.” Magic becomes an allegory for money, power and greed, where a little is needed to live (once you enter the system – like capitalism, perhaps?), but the more you have the more you want, and of course, there is only one top dog: isolated, and without humanity.

But it’s also not so simple as it sounds – some of her characters are stripped of their magic without them wanting to be, others are left magical without knowledge or choice. And while Reason opts out of magic, one of her friends, Tom, does not; he keeps his magic, and his foreshortened life. Justine is careful in her writing of his justification (“magic is who he is”), and leaves us hanging as to how he will turn out (he is the only character in the book that is never selfish with his magic, has never attempted to steal anyone else’s, and has even given it away when others needed it — but then again, he’s still young). We as readers are not meant to judge, and we only hope he will walk the lines between need and greed, power and responsibility.

Nice, J. Recommended.