I bought it ages and ages ago, but it’s been sitting on my Kindle for so long that I’d totally forgotten what it was about. Like, completely forgotten. I didn’t read the blurb before I started it, so I just went into it blind. And I think this is the best way to read Magonia.
So the book starts off by introducing us to Aza Ray, our protagonist. She is snarky and sarcastic and - bummer - suffers from a life-limiting lung condition.
I know. There I was thinking, ‘A book about a sarcastic girl with lung problems. Haven’t I already read this book?’ (and yes, I have, and it’s called The Fault in our Stars)
Except fairly soon in, Magonia takes a massive swerve off the dying-teen plotline and makes a dramatic u-turn into BizarroWorld.
I kind of want to talk about it, and I kind of don’t. I really think the best way to read Magonia is to know nothing about it on the way in. Ultimately it wasn’t my favourite read of the year, but the ‘Say - WHAT??’ part was really what kept me turning those pages.
The absolute best thing about this book is its imagination. It’s absolutely bonkers. And while the author lifted part of the premise of the book directly from Bishop Agobard’s work ‘On Hail and Thunder’, she chose a pretty obscure text to model her book on and she introduced enough bizarre stuff of her own to make me lift my eyebrows in impressed-ness.
I want to say it’s a unique book, but I just can’t make myself get over the fact that she lifted the concept of Magonia from someone else. If that hadn’t been the case, this book would have got a whole extra star.
I thought Aza Ray and Jason were okay protagonists. Aza Ray is a bit moany (and okay when she’s on earth and drowning in her own lungs then she’s maybe got something to moan about) and her narrative is a bit rambly but I liked that she made decisions and moved the plot along instead of just letting stuff happen to her. Jason was okay. I finished this book a couple of days ago but already I can’t remember much about him other than vague thoughts that he was quite a nice guy and super intelligent.
I’ve read some reviews where people have been thrilled about how beautiful this book was and how moving. I’m glad they thought that way, but it’s not really something that I picked up on. The narrative was a bit drifty and wander and I never really understood things like the ((({{{[[[ ]]]}}}))) brackets thing. Some people love that stuff; I’m not so much of a fan.
It’s hard to know who to recommend Magonia to. I’ve seen lots of reviewers whose opinions I’ve always agreed with differ wildly in their opinions of it. I thought it was fine. It didn’t blow me away, but I really appreciated the crazy imaginativeness of it.
3 stars