The backdrop of this book is an alternate world where magic is real, but the government of North America figured out where the magic genes are and chopped them out of everyone a couple of generations ago. But there is still magic in the rest of the world.
Maggie’s a senior in high school, and her mother has remarried. Val is from the old world (Europe), which still has magic, but they would have never let him into the new world if he had any magic. Except that Maggie always sees shadows around him – shadows that seem to be alive. Needless to say, she’s having trouble warming to her new stepfather.
When things finally come to a head, Maggie finds out that Val thought his magic had been taken away from him, which is the only reason that he agreed to move to the new world. But it may well be a very good thing that his magic is still there, and that Maggie clearly has magic of her own, because while the government thought they’d gotten rid of magic, magic clearly has other ideas, and things are coming to a head.
This is solid McKinley – back on form (I was rather disappointed in the last book she set in a more modern milieu) . It definitely tends more YA in substance (much less adult themes than Sunshine). I had held off on buying this one because Dragon Haven had made me wary, but I think she’s back on my buy immediately list after this book.
After plowing through Slater’s Ripe, I had to go back and get the book he wrote before that, which dealt with vegetables, instead of fruit. And I again found this to be one of the rare cookbooks I can read from cover to cover. However, it’s a little less useful to me than Ripe was, because the way that vegetables behave through a British winter is very different than how they behave in a Maine winter. In other words, short of buying a heated greenhouse, I will never have a winter crop of anything. So my seasonality is not the seasonality of this book – therefore, the gardening tips are not so useful to me. (Fruit seasons are more similar, so Ripe was still seasonally familiar to me.)
Orrec lives in the Uplands, a poor region of farms that hides a people with extraordinary gifts. Each family’s gift is different. Orrec’s family’s gift if Unmaking, and his gift is untamed. He is forced to blindfold his eyes so he doesn’t destroy the people he loves.
This is a serious, scholarly book about the 14th century, but written in such an approachable manner that anyone interested in this time period should be able to read it.
The North Wind and the Sea 