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Frontier Magic #1
Thirteenth Child
Eff was born a thirteenth child. Her twin brother, Lan, is the seventh son of a seventh son. This means he's supposed to possess amazing talent -- and she's supposed to bring only bad things to her family and her town. Undeterred, her family moves to the frontier, where her father will be a professor of magic at a school perilously close to the magical divide that separates settlers from the beasts of the wild.
10 pages, Audible Audio
First published May 1, 2009
210 people are currently reading
13379 people want to read
About the author
Patricia C. Wrede
66 books4,002 followersPatricia Collins Wrede was born in Chicago, Illinois and is the eldest of five children. She started writing in seventh grade. She attended Carleton College in Minnesota, where she majored in Biology and managed to avoid taking any English courses at all. She began work on her first novel, Shadow Magic, just after graduating from college in 1974. She finished it five years later and started her second book at once, having become permanently hooked on writing by this time.
Patricia received her M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1977.
She worked for several years as a financial analyst and accountant, first with the Minnesota Hospital Association, then with B. Dalton Booksellers, and finally at the Dayton Hudson Corporation headquarters.
Patricia finished her first novel in late 1978. In January, 1980, Pamela Dean, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Steven Brust, Nate Bucklin, and Patricia Wrede -- all, at that point, hopeful but unpublished -- formed the writer's group that later became known as "The Scribblies." Several years later, they were joined by Kara Dalkey. In April of 1980, Patricia's first novel sold to Ace Books. It came out at last in 1982, which is the year she met Lillian Stewart Carl (who introduced her to Lois McMaster Bujold by mail).
In 1985, shortly before the publication of her fifth book, she left the world of the gainfully employed to try winging it on her own.
Her interests include sewing, embroidery, desultory attempts at gardening, chocolate, not mowing the lawn, High Tea, and, of course, reading.
She is a vegetarian, and currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her cat Karma. She has no children.
Patricia received her M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1977.
She worked for several years as a financial analyst and accountant, first with the Minnesota Hospital Association, then with B. Dalton Booksellers, and finally at the Dayton Hudson Corporation headquarters.
Patricia finished her first novel in late 1978. In January, 1980, Pamela Dean, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Steven Brust, Nate Bucklin, and Patricia Wrede -- all, at that point, hopeful but unpublished -- formed the writer's group that later became known as "The Scribblies." Several years later, they were joined by Kara Dalkey. In April of 1980, Patricia's first novel sold to Ace Books. It came out at last in 1982, which is the year she met Lillian Stewart Carl (who introduced her to Lois McMaster Bujold by mail).
In 1985, shortly before the publication of her fifth book, she left the world of the gainfully employed to try winging it on her own.
Her interests include sewing, embroidery, desultory attempts at gardening, chocolate, not mowing the lawn, High Tea, and, of course, reading.
She is a vegetarian, and currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her cat Karma. She has no children.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,466 reviews
June 20, 2009
The other week I made a mistake and read some things on the Internet. In particular, I was sucked in to following a contretemps (read: “flamewar”) with the nickname of “Racefail 2.0″. The premise of the flamewar is that a writer, Patricia Wrede, wrote a book called The Thirteenth Child which was an exemplar of racist writing. The book takes place in a 19th century-America (”Columbia”) where magic is real, where megafauna roam the plains, and where the First Peoples never crossed the land bridge from Asia. The claim of racism, specifically, is that Wrede’s writing is an eliminationist fantasy which has erased the First Peoples from the face of the planet.
Something bothered me about this argument, but I wasn’t really following it very closely, and I hadn’t read the book, so I tossed off some sarcastic one-liners on Twitter about it (something along the lines of “When you’ve written as many books as Lois McMaster Bujold, you get to complain about this.” Bujold had gotten involved in the discussion, and was tarred and feathered by some of the participants along with Wrede). My friends Nat and Laura rightly called me on this as wrong-headed, as appeal to authority doesn’t settle the issue. I resolved to not comment on the issue again until I’d read the book.
I’ve read the book now. And now I know what was bothering me about the discussion: it was led, as near as I can tell, by people who were offended by the premise of The Thirteenth Child, rather than by the book. But premises aren’t books.
I have a sense, but no actual proof, that this willingness to confuse a premise with a book is more common among genre fans. Certainly I have trouble imagining a serious literary critic pillorying (or, for that matter, lauding!) a book without at least trying to read it: that would be a career-ending move. But looking at what I take to be the genesis of the flamewar I see a disturbing pattern: those (in this thread, who I noticed) who scream loudest and most stridently that Wrede is “erasing native Americans” also say things like “I haven’t read the book, nor will I”. One is free to experience a work or not at one’s pleasure, of course. I myself won’t watch any of Lars von Trier’s films, without even bothering to find out what the premise is. But that very decision makes (or should make) my opinions on his films of limited value.
With regards to The Thirteenth Child I have read the book, and throughout it I see Wrede dealing fairly sensitively, and subtly, with a variety of racial and gender issues. No, the Native Americans and First Peoples are not present, but Wrede drops a number of hints as to where their culture is. Her protagonist, a young girl named Eff, is fairly deeply buried inside a culture that is itself patriarchal and racist, and so does not call out injustice in her own voice stridently, but Wrede still manages to get the point across that this is a racist and sexist society. That, to me, tells me that this issue was on her mind, and she was trying to deal with it as much as her plot and character decisions would allow.
Judging a book by its summary is a dangerous business. It’s perfectly accurate, from a plot perspective, to describe Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow as a reverie, written by a Christian, in which Auschwitz is presented as a facility for resurrecting Jews. Likewise, Johnathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones could be described as an apologia for every Nazi indicted at Nuremberg. Both of these descriptions fail to accurately capture what you experience when you actually read the books, instead of the blurbs on the back of the covers.
I am not implying here that all of Wrede’s critics are book-burning zealots; there’s a lot to criticize in The Thirteenth Child. Many of the characters are flat and somewhat interchangable, the protagonist isn’t as well-developed as she should be, and there’s too much telling and not enough showing. There are also some reviews by people who actually read the book who view the racial issues as more problematic than I do. My central — and perhaps only — point here is that describing a book as racist without having read it is, in my mind, a problematic act in and of itself.
Something bothered me about this argument, but I wasn’t really following it very closely, and I hadn’t read the book, so I tossed off some sarcastic one-liners on Twitter about it (something along the lines of “When you’ve written as many books as Lois McMaster Bujold, you get to complain about this.” Bujold had gotten involved in the discussion, and was tarred and feathered by some of the participants along with Wrede). My friends Nat and Laura rightly called me on this as wrong-headed, as appeal to authority doesn’t settle the issue. I resolved to not comment on the issue again until I’d read the book.
I’ve read the book now. And now I know what was bothering me about the discussion: it was led, as near as I can tell, by people who were offended by the premise of The Thirteenth Child, rather than by the book. But premises aren’t books.
I have a sense, but no actual proof, that this willingness to confuse a premise with a book is more common among genre fans. Certainly I have trouble imagining a serious literary critic pillorying (or, for that matter, lauding!) a book without at least trying to read it: that would be a career-ending move. But looking at what I take to be the genesis of the flamewar I see a disturbing pattern: those (in this thread, who I noticed) who scream loudest and most stridently that Wrede is “erasing native Americans” also say things like “I haven’t read the book, nor will I”. One is free to experience a work or not at one’s pleasure, of course. I myself won’t watch any of Lars von Trier’s films, without even bothering to find out what the premise is. But that very decision makes (or should make) my opinions on his films of limited value.
With regards to The Thirteenth Child I have read the book, and throughout it I see Wrede dealing fairly sensitively, and subtly, with a variety of racial and gender issues. No, the Native Americans and First Peoples are not present, but Wrede drops a number of hints as to where their culture is. Her protagonist, a young girl named Eff, is fairly deeply buried inside a culture that is itself patriarchal and racist, and so does not call out injustice in her own voice stridently, but Wrede still manages to get the point across that this is a racist and sexist society. That, to me, tells me that this issue was on her mind, and she was trying to deal with it as much as her plot and character decisions would allow.
Judging a book by its summary is a dangerous business. It’s perfectly accurate, from a plot perspective, to describe Martin Amis’ Time’s Arrow as a reverie, written by a Christian, in which Auschwitz is presented as a facility for resurrecting Jews. Likewise, Johnathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones could be described as an apologia for every Nazi indicted at Nuremberg. Both of these descriptions fail to accurately capture what you experience when you actually read the books, instead of the blurbs on the back of the covers.
I am not implying here that all of Wrede’s critics are book-burning zealots; there’s a lot to criticize in The Thirteenth Child. Many of the characters are flat and somewhat interchangable, the protagonist isn’t as well-developed as she should be, and there’s too much telling and not enough showing. There are also some reviews by people who actually read the book who view the racial issues as more problematic than I do. My central — and perhaps only — point here is that describing a book as racist without having read it is, in my mind, a problematic act in and of itself.
August 15, 2010
Ok, so I was about to start off my review by saying that it's kindof like Little House meets Harry Potter. In fact, I even looked up the number for Little House on the Prairie so I wouldn't have to type out the whole name and I could look super cool because the link would still work anyway.
Then, after I looked up the number I started to read some of the other reviews (a dangerous habit) some of which read: "everybody keeps saying it's like Harry Potter meets Little House on the Prairie - which is crazy because (insert one or the other here) is WAY better..."
Whatever. I loved the book. It centers around Eff, for Francine, a child who had the unluck to be born 13th. She's blamed for anything bad that happens until her family moves out to an alternate American West and starts their life over again. I got the feeling that this is only the foundation for the series - and it's a pretty solid foundation. The family tension was great, the approach to magic was novel, and the dilemma's our protagonist found herself in were believable. ... i.e. not Mary Sueish. And there was never a time when I was like - why didn't they just cast that spell earlier? That sometimes happens when I read fantasy.
So, some people are upset because Wrede left out the Native Americans. (This is yet another reason why reading other people's reviews before you write yours is dangerous... you feel compelled to counter-argue attacks that might not be worth your time...) In this alternate America we have the first 3 Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson - then two others I can't remember - but it ain't Madison, Taft or FDR... We have Lewis and Clark sailing up the ummm... some river... and then dying. We've got Ben Franklin who was a great magical inventor of sorts. We've got non-concrete examples too - the families heading out to start over, some type of Manifest Destiny, the Rationalists who seem to signify different religious and political views of the times... (I took them to symbolize the Quakers and to some extent the Pennsylvania experiment, but that's just me...) It seems like the Settlement Office sent out our version of Lewis and Clark - as their expedition returns successful only having lost two men.
What we don't have are the Native Americans (or in this case Columbians.) It seems some people are taking this as a slight against them - but I don't think being passed over in a fictitious history for the sake of artistic integrity is worthy of offense. (Hear me out before you start calling me a racist, anti-Native-American bigot. I love Native Americans. I wish I was one. Or at least partly one. I love diversity.) Wrede said something to the extent of, "I don't like the Native Americans as savages stereo-type, but neither do I like the current romanticizing of them either so I'm eliminating the problem by taking them out." (You can find the exact quote here thanks to this reviewer and the link in her review...
The feeling I got from the Wrede quote though was not (as others have contended) that the Native Americans were the problem, but rather the stereotypes of the Native Americans were the problem, and maybe she couldn't write the book without falling back on one of those two stereotypes. So rather than misrepresenting entire Nations, she left them out. So I say Kudos to her. Secondly, did I mention this is an alternate USA? Lewis and Clark didn't die people. Well, ok. They did. Lewis was probably a suicide and Clark got sick... but The Corps of Discovery didn't. Point being, if she wants to avoid certain issues in a fictional world, she's free to do that. If you want to write a fantasy book about Native Columbian magic that helps them keep the Avrupans out - go ahead. I promise not to be offended. Which brings me to my third point - maybe if she would have included them in there the book would have become more about that issue than about Eff and frontier magic. Just a thought. Points being: I feel like it is much ado about nothing. Or much ado about relatively little at any rate. Some people were so offended they took away their stars after it came to light. Obviously, that won't be me. I LOVED this book, and I'll recommend it to any fantasy or non-fantasy fan.
And get used to it. We're sure to see it around for a while. If it's not already it will be the next Harry Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games...
Then, after I looked up the number I started to read some of the other reviews (a dangerous habit) some of which read: "everybody keeps saying it's like Harry Potter meets Little House on the Prairie - which is crazy because (insert one or the other here) is WAY better..."
Whatever. I loved the book. It centers around Eff, for Francine, a child who had the unluck to be born 13th. She's blamed for anything bad that happens until her family moves out to an alternate American West and starts their life over again. I got the feeling that this is only the foundation for the series - and it's a pretty solid foundation. The family tension was great, the approach to magic was novel, and the dilemma's our protagonist found herself in were believable. ... i.e. not Mary Sueish. And there was never a time when I was like - why didn't they just cast that spell earlier? That sometimes happens when I read fantasy.
So, some people are upset because Wrede left out the Native Americans. (This is yet another reason why reading other people's reviews before you write yours is dangerous... you feel compelled to counter-argue attacks that might not be worth your time...) In this alternate America we have the first 3 Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson - then two others I can't remember - but it ain't Madison, Taft or FDR... We have Lewis and Clark sailing up the ummm... some river... and then dying. We've got Ben Franklin who was a great magical inventor of sorts. We've got non-concrete examples too - the families heading out to start over, some type of Manifest Destiny, the Rationalists who seem to signify different religious and political views of the times... (I took them to symbolize the Quakers and to some extent the Pennsylvania experiment, but that's just me...) It seems like the Settlement Office sent out our version of Lewis and Clark - as their expedition returns successful only having lost two men.
What we don't have are the Native Americans (or in this case Columbians.) It seems some people are taking this as a slight against them - but I don't think being passed over in a fictitious history for the sake of artistic integrity is worthy of offense. (Hear me out before you start calling me a racist, anti-Native-American bigot. I love Native Americans. I wish I was one. Or at least partly one. I love diversity.) Wrede said something to the extent of, "I don't like the Native Americans as savages stereo-type, but neither do I like the current romanticizing of them either so I'm eliminating the problem by taking them out." (You can find the exact quote here thanks to this reviewer and the link in her review...
The feeling I got from the Wrede quote though was not (as others have contended) that the Native Americans were the problem, but rather the stereotypes of the Native Americans were the problem, and maybe she couldn't write the book without falling back on one of those two stereotypes. So rather than misrepresenting entire Nations, she left them out. So I say Kudos to her. Secondly, did I mention this is an alternate USA? Lewis and Clark didn't die people. Well, ok. They did. Lewis was probably a suicide and Clark got sick... but The Corps of Discovery didn't. Point being, if she wants to avoid certain issues in a fictional world, she's free to do that. If you want to write a fantasy book about Native Columbian magic that helps them keep the Avrupans out - go ahead. I promise not to be offended. Which brings me to my third point - maybe if she would have included them in there the book would have become more about that issue than about Eff and frontier magic. Just a thought. Points being: I feel like it is much ado about nothing. Or much ado about relatively little at any rate. Some people were so offended they took away their stars after it came to light. Obviously, that won't be me. I LOVED this book, and I'll recommend it to any fantasy or non-fantasy fan.
And get used to it. We're sure to see it around for a while. If it's not already it will be the next Harry Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games...
December 5, 2013
Like the sequel, ACROSS THE GREAT BARRIER, this book is set in a North America in which there are no Native Americans. While I accepted this as a fantasy universe, unrelated to ours (and I've read other books in which other races, including white, are omitted, and accepted them), and read it the book on its own merits, many people I respect deeply object to what they see as the deliberate erasure of the Native Americans. I tell you this so that you can make your own choice about whether you will read this book or not.
It is set in a frontier America somewhat like our own, with major difference. Some have magic, particularly Effa's brother, who is the seventh son of a seventh son. She, however, is a 13th child, supposed to be bad luck. Even her own relatives shun her. It is only when her family moves to the frontier that she begins to come into her own, developing her own approach to magic with the help of teachers who are not bound to the rigid European approach. It is when she visits towns across the Barrier in the great river and must defend one against magic-eating grubs that she faces her first test, when lives depend on whether she has truly become a wizard.
It is set in a frontier America somewhat like our own, with major difference. Some have magic, particularly Effa's brother, who is the seventh son of a seventh son. She, however, is a 13th child, supposed to be bad luck. Even her own relatives shun her. It is only when her family moves to the frontier that she begins to come into her own, developing her own approach to magic with the help of teachers who are not bound to the rigid European approach. It is when she visits towns across the Barrier in the great river and must defend one against magic-eating grubs that she faces her first test, when lives depend on whether she has truly become a wizard.
July 12, 2011
Something was missing. I kept reading, thinking surely Indians would appear. Maybe the narrator was too young to pay attention to un-European cultures, too wrapped up in her own family dynamics. Maybe they hadn't gotten far enough West? Maybe Indians would appear in the next volume?
Well. No Indians at all simply didn't occur to me, until I took a look at the blogs on the Tor site. Wrede decided to skip them, being uncomfortable with the only two options she perceived for portraying white/indian relations: either the Indians could be savages, or they could be ecologically advanced sages. And after all, they massacred the megafauna, right? So without them, she could also have mammoths. And then the Indians wouldn't have crossed the landbridge and therefore they're all still Siberian.
Uh huh. So, leaving aside any debates my fellow nerds might want to throw around about the theories of mass extinction, or about migration patterns to the New World - none of which are so simple - and maybe even leaving aside questions about moral responsibility (after all, an author should have the right to simply tell a good story, right?), it seems to me that this omission has raised some really troubling issues.
It's weird, right? Weird that such a capable writer would only see two unappealing stereotypes as her options for depicting Indian cultures. Weird that she'd think that readers wouldn't see that absence and feel uncomfortable, to say the least. Her vision of 'empty America' is too close to that old propaganda about Manifest Destiny - the Indians counted as wildlife, not people. Is it OK just to erase a gigantic episode of genocide from history because it's inconvenient to your story? After so many attempts to erase native americans from the official narrative, is it OK to do it again, for different reasons, in a popular kid's book? I suppose that's where the question of moral responsibility comes in.
I've seen other readers compare this to "Years of Rice and Salt", arguing that Robinson's story killed off Europeans wholesale and no one objected, and that this is just more of the same - a clever plot device. I don't know. At least Robinson accounted for the fact that there had been Europeans in his story, and that something terrible had befallen them. It just seems sinister, somehow, that in Wrede's world the Indians never even existed, like they'd not just been exterminated, but erased. Like those creepy Soviet photos, with executed former officials edited out. History re-written by the victors, so that no one will even remember what is lost.
I don't think that's what fiction should be used for. I have really, really mixed feelings about the book. It's got so many interesting facets - the characters are great, the magical system is fresh and intriguing - but the overall emotion I'm left with is sort of a queasy disgust.
Well. No Indians at all simply didn't occur to me, until I took a look at the blogs on the Tor site. Wrede decided to skip them, being uncomfortable with the only two options she perceived for portraying white/indian relations: either the Indians could be savages, or they could be ecologically advanced sages. And after all, they massacred the megafauna, right? So without them, she could also have mammoths. And then the Indians wouldn't have crossed the landbridge and therefore they're all still Siberian.
Uh huh. So, leaving aside any debates my fellow nerds might want to throw around about the theories of mass extinction, or about migration patterns to the New World - none of which are so simple - and maybe even leaving aside questions about moral responsibility (after all, an author should have the right to simply tell a good story, right?), it seems to me that this omission has raised some really troubling issues.
It's weird, right? Weird that such a capable writer would only see two unappealing stereotypes as her options for depicting Indian cultures. Weird that she'd think that readers wouldn't see that absence and feel uncomfortable, to say the least. Her vision of 'empty America' is too close to that old propaganda about Manifest Destiny - the Indians counted as wildlife, not people. Is it OK just to erase a gigantic episode of genocide from history because it's inconvenient to your story? After so many attempts to erase native americans from the official narrative, is it OK to do it again, for different reasons, in a popular kid's book? I suppose that's where the question of moral responsibility comes in.
I've seen other readers compare this to "Years of Rice and Salt", arguing that Robinson's story killed off Europeans wholesale and no one objected, and that this is just more of the same - a clever plot device. I don't know. At least Robinson accounted for the fact that there had been Europeans in his story, and that something terrible had befallen them. It just seems sinister, somehow, that in Wrede's world the Indians never even existed, like they'd not just been exterminated, but erased. Like those creepy Soviet photos, with executed former officials edited out. History re-written by the victors, so that no one will even remember what is lost.
I don't think that's what fiction should be used for. I have really, really mixed feelings about the book. It's got so many interesting facets - the characters are great, the magical system is fresh and intriguing - but the overall emotion I'm left with is sort of a queasy disgust.
January 15, 2012
Read This Review & More Like It At Ageless Pages Reviews
As a long time reader of Patricia Wrede's work, I have to say I was disappointed. There's no humor like the Enchanted Forest Chronicles or the Cecelia and Kate series, but there's also really no spirit of adventure like the Lyra books. Overall, Thirteenth Child is flat and depressing.
I had high hopes for the book. A low/alternate fantasy set not in medieval or Victorian England? Sign me up. Unfortunately, the world building was confusing and messy. All of the countries and continents have been renamed, but somehow George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are all a)born, b)given the same names, and c)found a new country, but except this time, they're wizards?
But the most disappointing thing of all is Wrede's take on Native Americans. That is to say, there aren't any. She's quoted as saying:
"The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). . . ."
Nope, not OK. Not even a little. I also had a problem with how the African-American characters were portrayed. They fit too easily into the "Magical Negro" trope.
I did like the magic system and how fleshed out it was. Eff, once she grew up, was an interesting character with goals and skills beyond magic. I realized as soon as the It was pleasing that it didn't take the characters hundreds of pages to also realize that.
Overall, I don't think I'll read the second, because the story didn't really hook me, but more importantly, because I can't support something so unthinkingly racist.
As a long time reader of Patricia Wrede's work, I have to say I was disappointed. There's no humor like the Enchanted Forest Chronicles or the Cecelia and Kate series, but there's also really no spirit of adventure like the Lyra books. Overall, Thirteenth Child is flat and depressing.
I had high hopes for the book. A low/alternate fantasy set not in medieval or Victorian England? Sign me up. Unfortunately, the world building was confusing and messy. All of the countries and continents have been renamed, but somehow George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are all a)born, b)given the same names, and c)found a new country, but except this time, they're wizards?
But the most disappointing thing of all is Wrede's take on Native Americans. That is to say, there aren't any. She's quoted as saying:
"The *plan* is for it to be a "settling the frontier" book, only without Indians (because I really hate both the older Indians-as-savages viewpoint that was common in that sort of book, *and* the modern Indians-as-gentle-ecologists viewpoint that seems to be so popular lately, and this seems the best way of eliminating the problem, plus it'll let me play with all sorts of cool megafauna). . . ."
Nope, not OK. Not even a little. I also had a problem with how the African-American characters were portrayed. They fit too easily into the "Magical Negro" trope.
I did like the magic system and how fleshed out it was. Eff, once she grew up, was an interesting character with goals and skills beyond magic. I realized as soon as the It was pleasing that it didn't take the characters hundreds of pages to also realize that.
Overall, I don't think I'll read the second, because the story didn't really hook me, but more importantly, because I can't support something so unthinkingly racist.
December 4, 2014
Despite the love of her family, Eff was born the 13th child and as such her relatives consider her cursed. She is as much despised as her twin brother, Lan the 7th son of a 7th son is loved. When her uncle attempts to have her arrested on a trumped up charge, her parents decide enough is enough and accept a job teaching at a college on the frontier.
For the first time in her life, Eff is able to live without a shadow hanging over her and with the guidance of a teacher of African magic she finally starts to come into her own. But with magical creatures across the divide pushing at the barriers set up to keep them out their lives are anything but secure.
I loved this book so much. At times the narrative had the feel Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird but set in an alternate wild west with magic, dragons, mammoths and sabre tooth lions. It was so much fun and despite my usual rule of not reading two books by the same author back to back I just couldn't help myself and dived right into book two.
For the first time in her life, Eff is able to live without a shadow hanging over her and with the guidance of a teacher of African magic she finally starts to come into her own. But with magical creatures across the divide pushing at the barriers set up to keep them out their lives are anything but secure.
I loved this book so much. At times the narrative had the feel Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird but set in an alternate wild west with magic, dragons, mammoths and sabre tooth lions. It was so much fun and despite my usual rule of not reading two books by the same author back to back I just couldn't help myself and dived right into book two.
November 9, 2015
I think this sums it up.
I'm not going to read the rest of the series.
I'm not going to read the rest of the series.
October 21, 2018
This is charming (pun intended) and, if not for the magic, would be a simple tale of a young girl struggling with nasty, narrow-minded relatives and then moving on to a frontier life with more freedom. But it's told in such a delightful way that, while it moves slowly - the book spans her life from about 5 to 18 - it isn't the least bit boring.
9/7/18 - I'm tired of fighting with GR to get the right version of books. I've read the ebook version, and now, today, I've finished the audio version. I can't seem to split the two versions, or keep my various re-reads straight.
This is still a 4star book. I recommend it to someone who loves a well-crafted fantasy story with great world-building, wonderful imaginary critters (magic-sucking bugs?? OH, yeah!), and few editing problems. I'm off to continue with the audio version of #2.
9/7/18 - I'm tired of fighting with GR to get the right version of books. I've read the ebook version, and now, today, I've finished the audio version. I can't seem to split the two versions, or keep my various re-reads straight.
This is still a 4star book. I recommend it to someone who loves a well-crafted fantasy story with great world-building, wonderful imaginary critters (magic-sucking bugs?? OH, yeah!), and few editing problems. I'm off to continue with the audio version of #2.
January 29, 2023
I've been meaning to read this book for at least ten years. Not sure why I didn't get around to it earlier: Little House on the Prairie plus magical megafauna is quite a fun combination. It would have been a lot more fun had megafauna been a bigger part of the story. Instead, The Thirteenth Child is largely a growing-up-on-the-magical-frontier kind of story starring Eff, a thirteenth child whom the superstitious blame for misfortune and expect to go over to the dark side. Her twin brother Lan, in contrast, is the seventh son of a seventh son, and great things are expected of him. Enter bigots!
The first three quarters of The Thirteenth Child are all about growing up in a border town in the alt-US country of Columbia, where a magical barrier developed by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson keeps the megafauna and magical beasts out of human civilization. Eff hangs out with her classmates, goes to school and learns magical theory, catches rheumatic fever, and deals with the fallout of her sister's elopment with a Rationalist who wants to make a settlement without magic. By far the most interesting thing that happens is that Eff (accidentally!) almost fries her obnoxious uncle.
It's fine, if leisurely paced and without the details that I adored in the Little House series (pig bladder balloons, anyone?). Wrede's alternate history of America (no indigenous people, but steam dragons and swarming weasels) and magical theories (each from different parts of the world: Aphrikan, Avrupan, and most improbably Hijero-Cathayan) are fairly interesting. There's not much of a plot until the last quarter, and the mystery/conflict is resolved pretty easily.
I enjoyed Wrede's world enough to put the rest of the trilogy on hold at the library, but they'd better come in soon because The Thirteenth Child is already fading from memory. I'm really hoping for more giant mammoths in the rest of the trilogy.
The first three quarters of The Thirteenth Child are all about growing up in a border town in the alt-US country of Columbia, where a magical barrier developed by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson keeps the megafauna and magical beasts out of human civilization. Eff hangs out with her classmates, goes to school and learns magical theory, catches rheumatic fever, and deals with the fallout of her sister's elopment with a Rationalist who wants to make a settlement without magic. By far the most interesting thing that happens is that Eff (accidentally!) almost fries her obnoxious uncle.
It's fine, if leisurely paced and without the details that I adored in the Little House series (pig bladder balloons, anyone?). Wrede's alternate history of America (no indigenous people, but steam dragons and swarming weasels) and magical theories (each from different parts of the world: Aphrikan, Avrupan, and most improbably Hijero-Cathayan) are fairly interesting. There's not much of a plot until the last quarter, and the mystery/conflict is resolved pretty easily.
I enjoyed Wrede's world enough to put the rest of the trilogy on hold at the library, but they'd better come in soon because The Thirteenth Child is already fading from memory. I'm really hoping for more giant mammoths in the rest of the trilogy.
July 14, 2009
The Thirteenth Child tells the story of Eff Rothmer, a thirteenth child. Her twin brother, Lan, is a double-seventh child, a position of great magical power and potential. Unfortunately for Eff, the thirteenth child is said to be cursed, hazardous to those around them, and even evil. Eff is terrified that she will one day "go bad" and hurt those around her, so she tries desperately to control her magic, and possibly even rid herself of it. Eff must learn how to become her own person with her own magic, no matter what others may think.
Set in an Old West that mixes the familiar -- buggies and frock coats -- with the fantastic -- steam dragons and spectral bears -- Thirteenth Child manages to be completely true and now. The choices Wrede makes keep the book from being the over the top, cheesy affair it could have been in someone else's hands. She never overdoes anything or tosses in too many fantastic problems or elements. Her fantasy elements are realistic, and she always makes sure that her characters and Eff's development takes precedence. Eff's voice and narration, too, are very enjoyable, with fun little turns of phrase that pop.
I rarely say this when I read a good stand-alone, because I respect an author that doesn't milk it by turning it into a series (and often thinning it out as a result), but I really hope there's more to come.
Set in an Old West that mixes the familiar -- buggies and frock coats -- with the fantastic -- steam dragons and spectral bears -- Thirteenth Child manages to be completely true and now. The choices Wrede makes keep the book from being the over the top, cheesy affair it could have been in someone else's hands. She never overdoes anything or tosses in too many fantastic problems or elements. Her fantasy elements are realistic, and she always makes sure that her characters and Eff's development takes precedence. Eff's voice and narration, too, are very enjoyable, with fun little turns of phrase that pop.
I rarely say this when I read a good stand-alone, because I respect an author that doesn't milk it by turning it into a series (and often thinning it out as a result), but I really hope there's more to come.
December 12, 2014
Eff is a thirteenth child. Destined, according to common magic, to “go bad.” Her aunts, uncles, and cousins are all of the opinion she should never have been born. A problem they think still might be rectified . . .
But Eff’s parents aren’t “common.” And when they make the extraordinary decision to leave the city and move the younger members of their family to the edge of the frontier, Eff has the chance to start over. To keep the secret. To learn aphrikan magic instead of avropan. To study with the teacher she admires, make friends with William (the son of her father’s co-worker), and maybe even save her twin brother, Lan (a double seventh son destined for greatness). Because on the frontier, nothing is common.
I loved this book! Original. Intriguing. And character-driven. Patricia C. Wrede writes wonderful fantasy. Eff’s world is fascinating—so close to our own, but one in which the members of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (and the ten expeditions after that) never returned home—no doubt due to the steam dragons, wooly mammoths, and other wild beasts on the frontier. This is a coming of age story. And the first book in a series. I cannot wait to see how Eff tackles the next stage of her life.
But Eff’s parents aren’t “common.” And when they make the extraordinary decision to leave the city and move the younger members of their family to the edge of the frontier, Eff has the chance to start over. To keep the secret. To learn aphrikan magic instead of avropan. To study with the teacher she admires, make friends with William (the son of her father’s co-worker), and maybe even save her twin brother, Lan (a double seventh son destined for greatness). Because on the frontier, nothing is common.
I loved this book! Original. Intriguing. And character-driven. Patricia C. Wrede writes wonderful fantasy. Eff’s world is fascinating—so close to our own, but one in which the members of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (and the ten expeditions after that) never returned home—no doubt due to the steam dragons, wooly mammoths, and other wild beasts on the frontier. This is a coming of age story. And the first book in a series. I cannot wait to see how Eff tackles the next stage of her life.
May 23, 2009
Proper credit to the folks who dream big. Even if they fail, they fail brilliantly, wrapped tightly within the confines of their meticulously constructed little worlds. When I got my copy of Thirteen Child I was told by two similar people two very different things. Friend #1 said: It's brilliant. It's like nothing you've read before. If you haven't read it, start. Friend #2 said: It's dull. Nothing happens. Don't waste your time. And as I am a fan of divisive books, I plunged right in. They've been describing this book as The Little House on the Prairie meets Harry Potter. I'd call it the Alvin Maker books meet Monster Blood Tattoo. However you choose to describe it, Wrede has woven a complex, thoughtful world. One that is not without its issues, but may be worth a visit just the same.
Eff was trouble from the moment she was born. That's what her relatives would have you believe anyway. Her twin brother Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son, and that's a good thing. But Eff is a thirteenth child, which as "everybody" knows means that she'll be turning evil one of these days. Eff's willing to believe it herself, but fortunately an opportunity comes up that allows her to leave the world of whispers and false accusations. Her father has accepted a commission to work at a college in the west. Once there, Eff learns that while she may not be powerful in the same way as her twin, she has access to magic and learning of an entirely different sort. And when a crises comes up that traps her nearest and dearest, Eff must draw upon new strength to solve the problem.
World building. That's the two-word phrase that circles this book like moths to a fluorescent bulb. Sometimes it feels like you can't find a review out there that doesn't use the term at some point. World building. It sounds like an arduous process, don't you think? The sheer construction of a world. If God did it in six to seven days then heaven only knows how long this took Wrede. And the sheer amount of thought that has gone into this book can leave you reeling. The explanation about how after the Secession War (which ended in 1838) the Assembly created colleges in the homestead areas to teach agriculture and engineering and Latin, law, and magic? That's clever. Or a sect of people who see magic as enabling, and living without it as healthy and whole. Smart stuff.
The downside of world building is speed. Wrede isn't going to begin this book with a slam bang action sequence or even much in the way of any conflict aside from the natural born suspicions of Eff and a brief confrontation between her family and her uncle's. Instead, the story rolls out with the details, thoughts, and feelings of another age. I found I liked reading this book because of the amount of depth Wrede poured into it, but I could see a lot of kids giving up a couple chapters in. Eff, for her part, often ponders things for entire days before acting on them. This isn't to say that there aren't kids out there that won't get into it. But it's a contemplative book. And for some, a dull process until the excitement at the end.
The whole "Little House meets Harry Potter" idea is cute, but that's not what I thought of as I read through this book. To my mind this book reminded me of nothing so much as the Monster Blood Tattoo series by D.M. Cornish, right now to the bone. Consider the similarities. In this story humans are trying to make lives for themselves but are constantly fighting magical beasts that destroy and devour them. In Monster Blood Tattoo humans are trying to live their lives only to be constantly fighting magical beasts that destroy and, occasionally, devour them. Both books are about frontiers (American vs. a disguised Australian outback). Both involve quite a bit of world building. The difference is in the details. When I told my Thirteenth Child disliking friend about these similarities her point was that this book was much slower than Cornish's texts. There is also the fact that in Cornish's world, the monsters speak. They become stand-ins for the Aborigines. An "other" that humans hurt and abuse because they refuse to learn anything about them. In Thirteenth Child, though, Wrede has taken a very different tactic. While she could have gone the old natives-as-beasts route, she has chosen a different way of handling the situation. Monster Blood Tattoo is about colonization. Thirteenth Child? Manifest destiny.
Which brings up the whole issue of race. Now full credit where credit is due, Ms. Wrede has two three-dimensional people of color in this book, and that's great. One of them, Mr. Wash Morris is a kind of Lee Scoresby character. The kind of rough-hewn man of the world that a girl-child like Eff/Lyra is going to instantly trust. A stand-in father figure, perhaps. Miss Ochiba is a little more difficult to define. With race you never want the minority to be the all-knowing wise person who teaches the white people a little more about themselves. Miss Ochiba comes dangerously close to that description, but what saves her from stereotype is her wit, character, and the fact that she really doesn't hand our heroine all her answers on a silver platter.
Then there is the issue of the American Indians. Which is to say, there aren't any. I had a discussion with my husband about this fact and the two of us hammered it out. Wrede had a couple ways she could go with this. You can include the American Indians and then give them magic like everyone else in this world. Problem with that is the potential for offense. I mean, if Wrede doesn't want her focus to be on the native population, then they're going to be relegated to the sidelines. To be historically accurate they'd be at war with our heroine's family too. And then there'd be the danger of learning their form of magic, how it's not better than anyone else's, etc. etc. etc. It could get all New Age spiritual on you. Alternatively, you don't give them any magic and then there's the question of why everyone else in the world has it EXCEPT for them. So Ms. Wrede removed them from the picture entirely. She didn't make any of the beasts of the wild sentient either, so there's no way of making a parallel between fighting beasts vs. fighting Indians. Is it a perfect situation? No, because now you've just gotten rid of an entire race. People are going to get mad about this absence.
Finally: Seventh Son (also known as the Alvin Maker books) by Orson Scott Card. Forget any comparisons to any other books I've mentioned. The story and world that I kept flashing back to when I read this book was Card's. Both his series and this one is concerned with seventh sons of seventh sons who live in an alternative frontier version of America where there is magic. History conforms to these new rules (as do place names). Card's world makes magic out of old wives' tales and hexes. Wrede actually teaches her magic in schoolhouses and universities. Card worked in American Indians, Wrede doesn't, and so the two series makes for a fascinating compare and contrast.
While it's sophisticated and (relatively) slow, there's nothing in this book that's inappropriate for the advanced 10-year-old. Even the one mention of out-of-wedlock sex is only obliquely referred to in terms of counting back the months from a child's birth. And for the right reader (maybe the one who likes "Seventh Son" even) there are just so many little details to enjoy. Like the fact that Benjamin Franklin was a self-educated seventh son of a seventh son (not hard to believe when you look at how many siblings he had in real life). You can respect an author's vision without necessarily loving it. But while I would have liked there to be just a touch more action and occurrences in "Thirteenth Child" I can respect that it's a studied look at a new alternative history. Not a perfect one, certainly. But original.
Ages 10 and up.
Eff was trouble from the moment she was born. That's what her relatives would have you believe anyway. Her twin brother Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son, and that's a good thing. But Eff is a thirteenth child, which as "everybody" knows means that she'll be turning evil one of these days. Eff's willing to believe it herself, but fortunately an opportunity comes up that allows her to leave the world of whispers and false accusations. Her father has accepted a commission to work at a college in the west. Once there, Eff learns that while she may not be powerful in the same way as her twin, she has access to magic and learning of an entirely different sort. And when a crises comes up that traps her nearest and dearest, Eff must draw upon new strength to solve the problem.
World building. That's the two-word phrase that circles this book like moths to a fluorescent bulb. Sometimes it feels like you can't find a review out there that doesn't use the term at some point. World building. It sounds like an arduous process, don't you think? The sheer construction of a world. If God did it in six to seven days then heaven only knows how long this took Wrede. And the sheer amount of thought that has gone into this book can leave you reeling. The explanation about how after the Secession War (which ended in 1838) the Assembly created colleges in the homestead areas to teach agriculture and engineering and Latin, law, and magic? That's clever. Or a sect of people who see magic as enabling, and living without it as healthy and whole. Smart stuff.
The downside of world building is speed. Wrede isn't going to begin this book with a slam bang action sequence or even much in the way of any conflict aside from the natural born suspicions of Eff and a brief confrontation between her family and her uncle's. Instead, the story rolls out with the details, thoughts, and feelings of another age. I found I liked reading this book because of the amount of depth Wrede poured into it, but I could see a lot of kids giving up a couple chapters in. Eff, for her part, often ponders things for entire days before acting on them. This isn't to say that there aren't kids out there that won't get into it. But it's a contemplative book. And for some, a dull process until the excitement at the end.
The whole "Little House meets Harry Potter" idea is cute, but that's not what I thought of as I read through this book. To my mind this book reminded me of nothing so much as the Monster Blood Tattoo series by D.M. Cornish, right now to the bone. Consider the similarities. In this story humans are trying to make lives for themselves but are constantly fighting magical beasts that destroy and devour them. In Monster Blood Tattoo humans are trying to live their lives only to be constantly fighting magical beasts that destroy and, occasionally, devour them. Both books are about frontiers (American vs. a disguised Australian outback). Both involve quite a bit of world building. The difference is in the details. When I told my Thirteenth Child disliking friend about these similarities her point was that this book was much slower than Cornish's texts. There is also the fact that in Cornish's world, the monsters speak. They become stand-ins for the Aborigines. An "other" that humans hurt and abuse because they refuse to learn anything about them. In Thirteenth Child, though, Wrede has taken a very different tactic. While she could have gone the old natives-as-beasts route, she has chosen a different way of handling the situation. Monster Blood Tattoo is about colonization. Thirteenth Child? Manifest destiny.
Which brings up the whole issue of race. Now full credit where credit is due, Ms. Wrede has two three-dimensional people of color in this book, and that's great. One of them, Mr. Wash Morris is a kind of Lee Scoresby character. The kind of rough-hewn man of the world that a girl-child like Eff/Lyra is going to instantly trust. A stand-in father figure, perhaps. Miss Ochiba is a little more difficult to define. With race you never want the minority to be the all-knowing wise person who teaches the white people a little more about themselves. Miss Ochiba comes dangerously close to that description, but what saves her from stereotype is her wit, character, and the fact that she really doesn't hand our heroine all her answers on a silver platter.
Then there is the issue of the American Indians. Which is to say, there aren't any. I had a discussion with my husband about this fact and the two of us hammered it out. Wrede had a couple ways she could go with this. You can include the American Indians and then give them magic like everyone else in this world. Problem with that is the potential for offense. I mean, if Wrede doesn't want her focus to be on the native population, then they're going to be relegated to the sidelines. To be historically accurate they'd be at war with our heroine's family too. And then there'd be the danger of learning their form of magic, how it's not better than anyone else's, etc. etc. etc. It could get all New Age spiritual on you. Alternatively, you don't give them any magic and then there's the question of why everyone else in the world has it EXCEPT for them. So Ms. Wrede removed them from the picture entirely. She didn't make any of the beasts of the wild sentient either, so there's no way of making a parallel between fighting beasts vs. fighting Indians. Is it a perfect situation? No, because now you've just gotten rid of an entire race. People are going to get mad about this absence.
Finally: Seventh Son (also known as the Alvin Maker books) by Orson Scott Card. Forget any comparisons to any other books I've mentioned. The story and world that I kept flashing back to when I read this book was Card's. Both his series and this one is concerned with seventh sons of seventh sons who live in an alternative frontier version of America where there is magic. History conforms to these new rules (as do place names). Card's world makes magic out of old wives' tales and hexes. Wrede actually teaches her magic in schoolhouses and universities. Card worked in American Indians, Wrede doesn't, and so the two series makes for a fascinating compare and contrast.
While it's sophisticated and (relatively) slow, there's nothing in this book that's inappropriate for the advanced 10-year-old. Even the one mention of out-of-wedlock sex is only obliquely referred to in terms of counting back the months from a child's birth. And for the right reader (maybe the one who likes "Seventh Son" even) there are just so many little details to enjoy. Like the fact that Benjamin Franklin was a self-educated seventh son of a seventh son (not hard to believe when you look at how many siblings he had in real life). You can respect an author's vision without necessarily loving it. But while I would have liked there to be just a touch more action and occurrences in "Thirteenth Child" I can respect that it's a studied look at a new alternative history. Not a perfect one, certainly. But original.
Ages 10 and up.
February 24, 2013
In a magical alternate Ben Franklin time, Bostonian Helvan Shores place, everyone knows the seventh son of the seventh son is the best of all, and the thirteenth child, the worst, even before age ten, when their magical powers show. Nasty relatives of narrator Eff, and her twin brother Lan, are cruelly certain. In the wild West, Mill City offers Papa, Henry, a university teaching position, with housing.
Despite pleas from elder progeny already moved out, the Rothmer parents lead the younger brood to fresh territory. Miss Ochiba teaches an extra class in Aphrikan natural sorcery, and her friend, scout Wash brings news of outlying settlements. Anger propels Lan's first magic feat, to hoist stuck-up William Graham above rapids.
Eff fears her temper will explode to endanger others too. But if she suppresses her ability, spells of those around her warp unpredictably. Metallic beetles appear, strange grubs eat crops, everything, even shoe leather off your feet, threatening everyone. Why is Oak River, settled by Rationalists, who do not use magic, the only safe haven?
The overall mood is so negative, I down-rate to 2*, almost 1*. Starting with bullying by cousins, even adult uncles and aunts, readers may identify with Eff-Francine. Her underlying insecurity continues on, despite parental and teacher support. Uncle Earn is villainous. Mr. Harrison, Head of Settlement Office, is the horrible worst of red-tape officialdom. Even bossy elder sister Rennie brings up the adult issue of premarital pregnancy, and sneaks spells to ease housework.
Unfortunately none of the humor I loved in author Wrede's Dragon series -- no playful downside-ups of stereotypes from traditional fairy tales , no silly snickers . Hero (girl) re-acts more than acts. The Frontier setup is so intriguing, so full of potential, that I am all the more disappointed overall.
Futzing spelling, such as "Aphrikan" for "African", puzzles me. Is Wrede trying to push an agenda? Is Luddite anti-mechanization involved? I do not plan to read the sequel.
Despite pleas from elder progeny already moved out, the Rothmer parents lead the younger brood to fresh territory. Miss Ochiba teaches an extra class in Aphrikan natural sorcery, and her friend, scout Wash brings news of outlying settlements. Anger propels Lan's first magic feat, to hoist stuck-up William Graham above rapids.
Eff fears her temper will explode to endanger others too. But if she suppresses her ability, spells of those around her warp unpredictably. Metallic beetles appear, strange grubs eat crops, everything, even shoe leather off your feet, threatening everyone. Why is Oak River, settled by Rationalists, who do not use magic, the only safe haven?
The overall mood is so negative, I down-rate to 2*, almost 1*. Starting with bullying by cousins, even adult uncles and aunts, readers may identify with Eff-Francine. Her underlying insecurity continues on, despite parental and teacher support. Uncle Earn is villainous. Mr. Harrison, Head of Settlement Office, is the horrible worst of red-tape officialdom. Even bossy elder sister Rennie brings up the adult issue of premarital pregnancy, and sneaks spells to ease housework.
Unfortunately none of the humor I loved in author Wrede's Dragon series -- no playful downside-ups of stereotypes from traditional fairy tales , no silly snickers . Hero (girl) re-acts more than acts. The Frontier setup is so intriguing, so full of potential, that I am all the more disappointed overall.
Futzing spelling, such as "Aphrikan" for "African", puzzles me. Is Wrede trying to push an agenda? Is Luddite anti-mechanization involved? I do not plan to read the sequel.
October 18, 2011
I already knew about this book's seriously problematic issue of, you know, erasing the existence of Native Americans, so I would never have spent money for it. But I was given a free copy, and I was really curious about what the book was like, so I gave it a go.
I actually thought that maybe the erasure of Indians thing wouldn't be that visible -- I was working on the assumption that the history I learned in school and a lot of the frontier books out there basically already do this, so probably it wouldn't stand out to me as being that different. But I was SO WRONG. It was so, so, so creepy to read about a frontier America with no actual Americans. It was like coming home to find your front door standing open and everyone gone, but no actual evidence of foul play. It was like the scenes in that Rapture horror movie "A Thief in the Night" that I watched at church as a child and has haunted me ever since -- the razor still running in the sink with no one nearby, the lawn mower running by itself in the yard, people just vanished. (That reference is for Martha.) You couldn't ignore it and enjoy the book at all, I kept waiting for someone to explain the apparent genocide. (And actually I was really into Kentucky history as a child, so I read tons of pioneer books, and the Native Americans were always the best part -- erasing them is really, really, really obvious! And weird! And fucked up! It is not something that is no big deal, or that just slides by you because you're a clueless white person.)
The weirdest part of this decision on the part of the author is that a HUGE plot point of the book is that everyone only learns European magic, but there is also African and Asian magic, where things like being the Thirteenth Child don't mean the same thing, and it's obviously setting up a series where the main character is going to learn to integrate all these strands of magical theory. If you are making a big deal about multicultural magic, why on earth would you erase two entire continents worth of other potentially magical cultures? There should be Native American magic there too, and it would make the book so much better!
Anyway, that's the lesson I took from this whole book -- being racist is not only wrong because it's, you know, wrong, it also makes your book/world worse. If you had decided to be less racist you would have written a better book, Patricia Wrede.
And on the rest of the book: it was kind of boring and bland and slow-moving to be honest with you. Even without being downgraded for eliminating an entire people group, I wouldn't have given it more than three stars at the VERY most.
I actually thought that maybe the erasure of Indians thing wouldn't be that visible -- I was working on the assumption that the history I learned in school and a lot of the frontier books out there basically already do this, so probably it wouldn't stand out to me as being that different. But I was SO WRONG. It was so, so, so creepy to read about a frontier America with no actual Americans. It was like coming home to find your front door standing open and everyone gone, but no actual evidence of foul play. It was like the scenes in that Rapture horror movie "A Thief in the Night" that I watched at church as a child and has haunted me ever since -- the razor still running in the sink with no one nearby, the lawn mower running by itself in the yard, people just vanished. (That reference is for Martha.) You couldn't ignore it and enjoy the book at all, I kept waiting for someone to explain the apparent genocide. (And actually I was really into Kentucky history as a child, so I read tons of pioneer books, and the Native Americans were always the best part -- erasing them is really, really, really obvious! And weird! And fucked up! It is not something that is no big deal, or that just slides by you because you're a clueless white person.)
The weirdest part of this decision on the part of the author is that a HUGE plot point of the book is that everyone only learns European magic, but there is also African and Asian magic, where things like being the Thirteenth Child don't mean the same thing, and it's obviously setting up a series where the main character is going to learn to integrate all these strands of magical theory. If you are making a big deal about multicultural magic, why on earth would you erase two entire continents worth of other potentially magical cultures? There should be Native American magic there too, and it would make the book so much better!
Anyway, that's the lesson I took from this whole book -- being racist is not only wrong because it's, you know, wrong, it also makes your book/world worse. If you had decided to be less racist you would have written a better book, Patricia Wrede.
And on the rest of the book: it was kind of boring and bland and slow-moving to be honest with you. Even without being downgraded for eliminating an entire people group, I wouldn't have given it more than three stars at the VERY most.
November 16, 2014
I don't honestly know how or why I even finished this. Great idea but so poorly executed. Drying paint has held my attention better. Deleting the 2 sequels off of my to-read list.
March 18, 2015
Since I last used it (2011 or 2012?) Goodreads seems to have gotten a more sophisticated recommendations algorithm, and I have been wanting some lighthearted/engrossing but not depressing books. I added some of my favorite books from when I was a kid along with some recently-read grown-up novels and figured I would try the first few recommedations without being too choosy.
When the first couple came from interlibrary loan I was all jazzed and picked "Thirteenth Child" (which I didn't realize until I was reading it was a YA novel) to read first. All I knew about it was the, like, two-sentence Goodreads blurb which is something like, "Young girl is disliked in her home town for superstitious reasons, but things change when her family moves to a college for magicians in dangerous frontier country."
Frontier should have been my first clue, in retrospect.
So I'm reading, and it's a YA book, so the world building isn't THAT complicated, so pretty quick, I'm like, okay, this isn't a fantasy world where the frontier is the disputed border with Elvenland, it's actually steam!punk magic America, cool, so like the native Americans will have different kinds of non academic magic, etc.
So I'm reading.
They're going to the frontier.
The kids are all scared.
You got a lot of danger on the frontier.
And they're ON THE DAMN TRAIN before I clue in.
That on the frontier. There are no. Native. Americans.
There are no Native Americans in this book at all.
None.
Zip.
Zero.
Nada.
I'm like, this is a glaring oversight if ever there was one. Because (among other things), if there are no native Americans then what is so dangerous about the frontier? Native Americans (however clumsily and offensively portrayed) are crucial to American frontier narratives, which are about being caught between a rock and a hard place. From "The Last of the Mohicans" to "Firefly," frontier stories are about white people in danger from powerful white/European government forces on the one side and extremely hostile Native American government forces on the other. If you are writing a frontier story without Native Americans, then who is going to play Charybdis in this book?
WELL I'M GLAD YOU ASKED.
BECAUSE IT'S MAGICAL MEGA FAUNA.
THIS IS THE BOOK.
THIS IS THE I COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO WRITE NATIVE AMERICANS HERE HAVE A WOOLY MAMMOTH BOOK.
It turns out that, sixish years after the fact, I had actually misremembered this book in Patricia Wrede's favor. I thought that she had floated the idea of this book to a newsgroup and been roundly talked out of it, but not before putting her foot right in her racist mouth and alienating the entire Internet. But I was wrong! It was way worse than that! Not only did this book get published, but when Wrede posted the idea to the newsgroup in question, she framed the plot conceit with choice lines like, "There won't be any Native Americans to have already done a certain amount of prepping land for human occupation."
WHAT. WOW. WHOA. UH. WOW.
But I didn't really put this together as the MammothFail book until I gave up and googled 50 pages in (hint: the search string was "Fandom wank no Indians just mega fauna."). For the first 50 pages, I was just reading this book.
And it's TERRIBLE. Not having any Native Americans is such a glaring oversight that you're like, "Okay...so...in addition to you being a terrible racist, you are a horrible writer?" This is a book about a very recognizable America. The country on the "new continent," populated mostly by settlers from "Avrupa" or the Old Continent, is called Columbia. There was a Civil War over slavery and secession. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are still the Founders. Amish people are determined to settle into the west. Hell, this book features LAND GRANT UNIVERSITIES as a major plot point. It hews that closely to American history. So as I read this book, I certainly didn't conclude, "Oh, Native Americans just didn't cross the Bering strait"*.
*1, That is an outdated and incorrect theory about how long Native Americans have lived on North and South America anyway, and this book wasn't written in the 1950s or whenever, it hails from the year of our lord 2009, five years AFTER Charles C Mann published his popular history "1491," which summarizes the previous 20 years (dating back to 1985 if you didn't want to do the math) of academic research into Native America before encounter with Europe, which has as its explicit goal dispelling major myths about Native America, including that Native Americans arrived in North America by walking across a Bering Strait land bridge.
2, If you have to explain extra-textually that your book didn't magic Native Americans out of existence, it just relocated them to Siberia, THEN YOU HAVE WRITTEN A BAD BOOK. Having to explain away a major flaw to your writing OUTSIDE of the writing is just sloppy. Were the publishers going to include a little placard, sort of like the Broadway shows do, in the front cover of each copy, reading, "In this book, the role of more than 500 diverse and complex sovereign Native American nations will be played by magical mega fauna?"
Back to our review: Because that is the obvious conclusion and the obvious parallel. The DEADLY MAGICAL MEGA FAUNA in this book ARE the Native Americans.
That's their function in the story. They are deadly animals who threaten civilization. They are mysterious and inexplicable. No one knows why they do what they do. They can't be communicated with. They need to be chased away or contained so that the HUMAN BEINGS in the story can farm peaceably.
This might be the worst book in the world.
By the time Eff and her family were settled in "Mill City," I was, like, 90% out of this book. I finished it because a, reading is good for your neurons and b, well, honestly, I wanted to be able to declare this the worst book in the world with authority.
So what do I think, absent the absurd, historically indefensible, offensively ignorant erasure of Native Americans?
This book is really bad.
Even for a tossed-off, table-setting Part One of a YA trilogy (dear God, can nothing stand alone in YA anymore? Even worse, can any terrible idea get a three-book deal? I'm panning in the wrong river, apparently.), this book is not really very good. It spans 14 years in ~350ish pages and could have covered half the time in half the pages without losing anything (in particular, there is a 90-page 5-year stretch of sheer background starting about halfway through that should have been chopped). The pacing is downright languorous. For 300 pages, nothing much happens. Eff has nasty relatives in the East. Her family moves toDesomahapids or wherever Mill City. Lan's magic blows up and then Eff's does, too. Eff finally crosses the Mississippi, where she defeats an army of bugs using special African magic (I heard the working title of this chapter was "Dances With Mega Fauna"). That's it.
The rest of the time, Eff worries, gets rheumatic fever and does chores. For 300 pages. And while all this happens, you know what we DON'T see? The promised magical creatures Beyond The Wall. Were you really excited about steam dragons, a cool-ass sounding magical creature? One flies past a window, then dies off-screen. How about those fucking wooly mammoths that took like nine of our ancestors and their spears to bring down? Be pretty cool to see a herd of THOSE stampeding over the horizon, right? There's one. It's in a zoo. But, come on, there's a whole world out there just over the horizon! Don't get excited, we're not going there until page 300, and then we're going to spend a few pages with Eff, doing chores. Wrede seems to have been inspired by Native Americans more than she knew: the "megafauna" in the book are spoken of as a constant threat, but the only megafauna we meet are dead, killed by the thousand, or kept in a cage and put on display (google "human zoos." Or keep your lunch and don't.).
The writing itself is...fine. Some old-timey frontier slang wears out its welcome pretty quickly, but other than that it's unobjectionable. It actually does take work and skill to write a book whose prose hides itself to play second fiddle to the plot, so I guess that is the nicest thing I can summon about this book: The writing isn't noticeably bad and does not show many flaws.
Apparently, this book is not a standalone, as I originally hoped, but an actual trilogy, whose second and third books are actually being published. I assume contractual obligation comes into play. It's probably needless to say, but I won't be reading them.
When the first couple came from interlibrary loan I was all jazzed and picked "Thirteenth Child" (which I didn't realize until I was reading it was a YA novel) to read first. All I knew about it was the, like, two-sentence Goodreads blurb which is something like, "Young girl is disliked in her home town for superstitious reasons, but things change when her family moves to a college for magicians in dangerous frontier country."
Frontier should have been my first clue, in retrospect.
So I'm reading, and it's a YA book, so the world building isn't THAT complicated, so pretty quick, I'm like, okay, this isn't a fantasy world where the frontier is the disputed border with Elvenland, it's actually steam!punk magic America, cool, so like the native Americans will have different kinds of non academic magic, etc.
So I'm reading.
They're going to the frontier.
The kids are all scared.
You got a lot of danger on the frontier.
And they're ON THE DAMN TRAIN before I clue in.
That on the frontier. There are no. Native. Americans.
There are no Native Americans in this book at all.
None.
Zip.
Zero.
Nada.
I'm like, this is a glaring oversight if ever there was one. Because (among other things), if there are no native Americans then what is so dangerous about the frontier? Native Americans (however clumsily and offensively portrayed) are crucial to American frontier narratives, which are about being caught between a rock and a hard place. From "The Last of the Mohicans" to "Firefly," frontier stories are about white people in danger from powerful white/European government forces on the one side and extremely hostile Native American government forces on the other. If you are writing a frontier story without Native Americans, then who is going to play Charybdis in this book?
WELL I'M GLAD YOU ASKED.
BECAUSE IT'S MAGICAL MEGA FAUNA.
THIS IS THE BOOK.
THIS IS THE I COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO WRITE NATIVE AMERICANS HERE HAVE A WOOLY MAMMOTH BOOK.
It turns out that, sixish years after the fact, I had actually misremembered this book in Patricia Wrede's favor. I thought that she had floated the idea of this book to a newsgroup and been roundly talked out of it, but not before putting her foot right in her racist mouth and alienating the entire Internet. But I was wrong! It was way worse than that! Not only did this book get published, but when Wrede posted the idea to the newsgroup in question, she framed the plot conceit with choice lines like, "There won't be any Native Americans to have already done a certain amount of prepping land for human occupation."
WHAT. WOW. WHOA. UH. WOW.
But I didn't really put this together as the MammothFail book until I gave up and googled 50 pages in (hint: the search string was "Fandom wank no Indians just mega fauna."). For the first 50 pages, I was just reading this book.
And it's TERRIBLE. Not having any Native Americans is such a glaring oversight that you're like, "Okay...so...in addition to you being a terrible racist, you are a horrible writer?" This is a book about a very recognizable America. The country on the "new continent," populated mostly by settlers from "Avrupa" or the Old Continent, is called Columbia. There was a Civil War over slavery and secession. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are still the Founders. Amish people are determined to settle into the west. Hell, this book features LAND GRANT UNIVERSITIES as a major plot point. It hews that closely to American history. So as I read this book, I certainly didn't conclude, "Oh, Native Americans just didn't cross the Bering strait"*.
*1, That is an outdated and incorrect theory about how long Native Americans have lived on North and South America anyway, and this book wasn't written in the 1950s or whenever, it hails from the year of our lord 2009, five years AFTER Charles C Mann published his popular history "1491," which summarizes the previous 20 years (dating back to 1985 if you didn't want to do the math) of academic research into Native America before encounter with Europe, which has as its explicit goal dispelling major myths about Native America, including that Native Americans arrived in North America by walking across a Bering Strait land bridge.
2, If you have to explain extra-textually that your book didn't magic Native Americans out of existence, it just relocated them to Siberia, THEN YOU HAVE WRITTEN A BAD BOOK. Having to explain away a major flaw to your writing OUTSIDE of the writing is just sloppy. Were the publishers going to include a little placard, sort of like the Broadway shows do, in the front cover of each copy, reading, "In this book, the role of more than 500 diverse and complex sovereign Native American nations will be played by magical mega fauna?"
Back to our review: Because that is the obvious conclusion and the obvious parallel. The DEADLY MAGICAL MEGA FAUNA in this book ARE the Native Americans.
That's their function in the story. They are deadly animals who threaten civilization. They are mysterious and inexplicable. No one knows why they do what they do. They can't be communicated with. They need to be chased away or contained so that the HUMAN BEINGS in the story can farm peaceably.
This might be the worst book in the world.
By the time Eff and her family were settled in "Mill City," I was, like, 90% out of this book. I finished it because a, reading is good for your neurons and b, well, honestly, I wanted to be able to declare this the worst book in the world with authority.
So what do I think, absent the absurd, historically indefensible, offensively ignorant erasure of Native Americans?
This book is really bad.
Even for a tossed-off, table-setting Part One of a YA trilogy (dear God, can nothing stand alone in YA anymore? Even worse, can any terrible idea get a three-book deal? I'm panning in the wrong river, apparently.), this book is not really very good. It spans 14 years in ~350ish pages and could have covered half the time in half the pages without losing anything (in particular, there is a 90-page 5-year stretch of sheer background starting about halfway through that should have been chopped). The pacing is downright languorous. For 300 pages, nothing much happens. Eff has nasty relatives in the East. Her family moves to
The rest of the time, Eff worries, gets rheumatic fever and does chores. For 300 pages. And while all this happens, you know what we DON'T see? The promised magical creatures Beyond The Wall. Were you really excited about steam dragons, a cool-ass sounding magical creature? One flies past a window, then dies off-screen. How about those fucking wooly mammoths that took like nine of our ancestors and their spears to bring down? Be pretty cool to see a herd of THOSE stampeding over the horizon, right? There's one. It's in a zoo. But, come on, there's a whole world out there just over the horizon! Don't get excited, we're not going there until page 300, and then we're going to spend a few pages with Eff, doing chores. Wrede seems to have been inspired by Native Americans more than she knew: the "megafauna" in the book are spoken of as a constant threat, but the only megafauna we meet are dead, killed by the thousand, or kept in a cage and put on display (google "human zoos." Or keep your lunch and don't.).
The writing itself is...fine. Some old-timey frontier slang wears out its welcome pretty quickly, but other than that it's unobjectionable. It actually does take work and skill to write a book whose prose hides itself to play second fiddle to the plot, so I guess that is the nicest thing I can summon about this book: The writing isn't noticeably bad and does not show many flaws.
Apparently, this book is not a standalone, as I originally hoped, but an actual trilogy, whose second and third books are actually being published. I assume contractual obligation comes into play. It's probably needless to say, but I won't be reading them.
Read
June 18, 2009I was eager to read this because I'd liked Wrede's other books (the Enchanted Forest Chronicles and Cecelia and Kate series) and am always on the lookout for books that create a distinctly American magical world. So I dived in. (6/18/09 see update at end of this review.)
The world building here is thorough. Wrede gives us an alternate American frontier --- one where magic and magicians rather than rifles and John Wayne types keep settlers safe. We get snippets of alternate political history (some personages like Thomas Jefferson appear from our history and some are new), social history (education in particular), and natural history (with both magical and actual animals). While dragons are out there it is the small things, say beetles, that turn out to be the most dangerous.
The title character is Eff, terrified by certain relatives that her unlucky family position will be the ruin of them all. She moves along with her twin brother Lan (revered as a seventh son of a seventh son) and most of her very large family to a frontier town where her father is to teach magic in a land grant college. So far so good. But then we are moved along through Eff's life for years --- learning about magic, worrying about what terrible thing she may do, and so on. Even though the book is in Eff's voice, I could never connect to her, despite all that happened and all that she said, I just couldn't get a good sense of her at all. I'm a character driven reader and I think I needed more about her than I got.
I could have used a more driving plot. I picked up and put down the book a number of times and almost quit at one point because nothing significant seemed to happen (at least for me as a reader). Most of the book seemed world building, introduction of many characters and situations that will, I'm guessing, be more important in later books. (This is the first in a series, Frontier Magic.)
(6/18/09 Edited to add currently there is a raging discussion on child_lit in and around Wrede's decision to not include/leave out Native Americans in her story's world, a conversation that I'd already seen elsewhere as well after writing my original review here. I have to admit that, as I read, while I occasionally wondered about this, I just vaguely thought that they'd show up in a future volume. Clearly I didn't pay attention to the fact that the Native Americans just weren't ever in that America. My bad. I see someone else, after reading about this, removed her stars and I'm going to do that too.)
The world building here is thorough. Wrede gives us an alternate American frontier --- one where magic and magicians rather than rifles and John Wayne types keep settlers safe. We get snippets of alternate political history (some personages like Thomas Jefferson appear from our history and some are new), social history (education in particular), and natural history (with both magical and actual animals). While dragons are out there it is the small things, say beetles, that turn out to be the most dangerous.
The title character is Eff, terrified by certain relatives that her unlucky family position will be the ruin of them all. She moves along with her twin brother Lan (revered as a seventh son of a seventh son) and most of her very large family to a frontier town where her father is to teach magic in a land grant college. So far so good. But then we are moved along through Eff's life for years --- learning about magic, worrying about what terrible thing she may do, and so on. Even though the book is in Eff's voice, I could never connect to her, despite all that happened and all that she said, I just couldn't get a good sense of her at all. I'm a character driven reader and I think I needed more about her than I got.
I could have used a more driving plot. I picked up and put down the book a number of times and almost quit at one point because nothing significant seemed to happen (at least for me as a reader). Most of the book seemed world building, introduction of many characters and situations that will, I'm guessing, be more important in later books. (This is the first in a series, Frontier Magic.)
(6/18/09 Edited to add currently there is a raging discussion on child_lit in and around Wrede's decision to not include/leave out Native Americans in her story's world, a conversation that I'd already seen elsewhere as well after writing my original review here. I have to admit that, as I read, while I occasionally wondered about this, I just vaguely thought that they'd show up in a future volume. Clearly I didn't pay attention to the fact that the Native Americans just weren't ever in that America. My bad. I see someone else, after reading about this, removed her stars and I'm going to do that too.)
November 24, 2015
I loved this book. The prose had the perfect amount of description. I loved the depth of the magic system; it felt well-developed. The book was fascinating, and I loved Eff. She and her family were wonderful characters. It was very original, and I admit that I also loved that Ms. Wrede was able to tell such an intriguing story without any romance.
January 14, 2025
Eff is a twin and the thirteenth child in her family. Her twin brother, Lan, is supposed to have great good luck and magical power because he is the seventh son and their father is also a seventh son, making Lan a double-seventh son, a powerful combination in magical numerology. But the thirteenth child is supposed to be a curse and full of bad luck and evil tendencies. Eff is discriminated against by the magical community, but her family and her twin brother stick up for her. When the family moves to the very edge of the frontier in the American West, Lan and Eff will face challenges and their magic will be tested to the utmost.
I really loved Eff's character development! The story follows her from the age of 5 until she is 16 years old, so we get to see as she matures and grows through the years. Being the thirteenth child hangs like a shadow over her life, but she works hard to prove that she is a good person. Still she fears that might bring bad luck to her family. She has to struggle past those fears and embrace her magic.
The magic system and world-building of the western frontier is really interesting! There are dragons in the mountains, and wooly mammoth creatures and weird little magical creatures all over the frontier. The settlements have trouble keeping out the dangerous animals, so they put up protective spells all around their little settlement towns, but some people are prejudiced against magic and they insist that the settlements would be better off with no magic at all.
I'm hoping that I can read the rest of this trilogy, but the other two books are really difficult to find.
I really loved Eff's character development! The story follows her from the age of 5 until she is 16 years old, so we get to see as she matures and grows through the years. Being the thirteenth child hangs like a shadow over her life, but she works hard to prove that she is a good person. Still she fears that might bring bad luck to her family. She has to struggle past those fears and embrace her magic.
The magic system and world-building of the western frontier is really interesting! There are dragons in the mountains, and wooly mammoth creatures and weird little magical creatures all over the frontier. The settlements have trouble keeping out the dangerous animals, so they put up protective spells all around their little settlement towns, but some people are prejudiced against magic and they insist that the settlements would be better off with no magic at all.
I'm hoping that I can read the rest of this trilogy, but the other two books are really difficult to find.
June 1, 2009
So let me start off by saying, it’s about three hours after my bedtime, but I couldn’t go to sleep without telling you about Patricia Wrede’s Thirteenth Child. I’d actually planned to post this sometime later today, on release day and all, but I can’t wait. I’m writing this in a bit of fit of passion, so you’ll forgive me for that. (My class tomorrow might not, but they’ll just have to learn around my snoring.)
I’d picked it up again earlier today to reread the second half because I wanted to give it a far shake before reviewing it, and ended up reading the entire thing in more or less one sitting. (Much to my understanding husband’s dismay. I think he remembers what my eye color looks like.) Okay, okay, without further distraction, the review.
How I Found This Book: This was actually an ARC sent to me by the lovely Laura Anne Gilman. She was looking for, as she put it, galley slaves to read galleys and ARC copies, I posted on her LJ I was interested, and I got free books out of the deal. The internet is a beautiful place. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I signed up, because frankly I would have been mad at myself for the rest of my life if I’d never read this book. I cannot wait to see more in the Frontier Magic series, YA or not YA, good writing is good writing.
The Good: So the good, where to start really? Strong but still believable and sympathetic female lead? Check! Beautiful World Building full of neat touches I hadn’t seen before and ideas I’d wished I’d dreamed up? Check! A vast and believable alternate history that unfurled before me without ever feeling like info dump? Double Check! Characters with language all their own? Check and check. Without giving anything away, this is, simply put, the best coming of age western steampunk fantasy adventure I’ve ever read, and I’m a big fan of Weird West. Wrede does an amazing job of giving the reader the feeling that Eff, the first person narrator speaks with a dialect from the times, without it ever getting in the way of the reading. Beyond that, her pacing is just brilliant. As I commented to my husband while reading, “Ten years just flew by for this little girl, more or less, and I don’t feel like it was rushed, that I missed anything, or that it wandered around like I so often do with time spanning fantasy.” He said something like, “yes dear,” and let me get back to my studious reading. As a mother with a daughter myself, I couldn’t be more excited to know I’ll be able to hand this book to my budding frontiers’ woman some day and know that the main character Eff is someone she can look up too without me worrying about it. At a pivotal moment in the book, when Eff decides what she wants to do with her life, making a huge step in her development, I felt this motherly swell of pride as if Eff were my awkward teenage girl, and now, she’d grown up and made a good choice, so I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. What a great feeling to get out of a book. Ms. Wrede, seriously, when do I get more of this story?
The Bad: In the interests of fairness, I’d have to say there was a time or two when Eff’s worrying and fretting got to be a little nerve racking. Sometimes it seemed it was just an endless cycle of her worrying over nothing, being reassured by someone she respected, but then going back to worrying a few pages later. Of course, just as soon as that feeling flared up, I remember back to when I was an awkward teenage girl, how I worried about everything and was just so sure I would ‘just turn out wrong’ and Eff’s worries seemed less silly. I’d say that’s about the only thing that stood out as why this book was YA instead of just fantasy. I still want to give props to Wrede, however, for remembering the sentiments of that age in a way I hadn’t even without been all that far removed from my teen years myself.
Who Will Like This Book: If you know a tween or teen girl who’s nervous but special, only she doesn’t know she’s special, get her a copy of this book immediately. If you know any youngin’ who likes Harry Potter but isn’t all that into the sheer Britishness of the Potter series, get them this book. Get this book for women you know with daughters, I’d be curious to see how many other moms got the same swell of pride I was hit with. And most importantly, if you like the Weird West, you ignore the YA category and go get this book for yourself. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.
Who Won’t Like This Book: Some of Eff’s more unreasonable girly traits and worries might turn off a young boy, but I think so much of the story is just so adventurous, it might not matter to them. Other than that, I can’t come up with any good examples. No really, read this book.
I’d picked it up again earlier today to reread the second half because I wanted to give it a far shake before reviewing it, and ended up reading the entire thing in more or less one sitting. (Much to my understanding husband’s dismay. I think he remembers what my eye color looks like.) Okay, okay, without further distraction, the review.
How I Found This Book: This was actually an ARC sent to me by the lovely Laura Anne Gilman. She was looking for, as she put it, galley slaves to read galleys and ARC copies, I posted on her LJ I was interested, and I got free books out of the deal. The internet is a beautiful place. I can’t tell you how glad I am that I signed up, because frankly I would have been mad at myself for the rest of my life if I’d never read this book. I cannot wait to see more in the Frontier Magic series, YA or not YA, good writing is good writing.
The Good: So the good, where to start really? Strong but still believable and sympathetic female lead? Check! Beautiful World Building full of neat touches I hadn’t seen before and ideas I’d wished I’d dreamed up? Check! A vast and believable alternate history that unfurled before me without ever feeling like info dump? Double Check! Characters with language all their own? Check and check. Without giving anything away, this is, simply put, the best coming of age western steampunk fantasy adventure I’ve ever read, and I’m a big fan of Weird West. Wrede does an amazing job of giving the reader the feeling that Eff, the first person narrator speaks with a dialect from the times, without it ever getting in the way of the reading. Beyond that, her pacing is just brilliant. As I commented to my husband while reading, “Ten years just flew by for this little girl, more or less, and I don’t feel like it was rushed, that I missed anything, or that it wandered around like I so often do with time spanning fantasy.” He said something like, “yes dear,” and let me get back to my studious reading. As a mother with a daughter myself, I couldn’t be more excited to know I’ll be able to hand this book to my budding frontiers’ woman some day and know that the main character Eff is someone she can look up too without me worrying about it. At a pivotal moment in the book, when Eff decides what she wants to do with her life, making a huge step in her development, I felt this motherly swell of pride as if Eff were my awkward teenage girl, and now, she’d grown up and made a good choice, so I didn’t have to worry about her anymore. What a great feeling to get out of a book. Ms. Wrede, seriously, when do I get more of this story?
The Bad: In the interests of fairness, I’d have to say there was a time or two when Eff’s worrying and fretting got to be a little nerve racking. Sometimes it seemed it was just an endless cycle of her worrying over nothing, being reassured by someone she respected, but then going back to worrying a few pages later. Of course, just as soon as that feeling flared up, I remember back to when I was an awkward teenage girl, how I worried about everything and was just so sure I would ‘just turn out wrong’ and Eff’s worries seemed less silly. I’d say that’s about the only thing that stood out as why this book was YA instead of just fantasy. I still want to give props to Wrede, however, for remembering the sentiments of that age in a way I hadn’t even without been all that far removed from my teen years myself.
Who Will Like This Book: If you know a tween or teen girl who’s nervous but special, only she doesn’t know she’s special, get her a copy of this book immediately. If you know any youngin’ who likes Harry Potter but isn’t all that into the sheer Britishness of the Potter series, get them this book. Get this book for women you know with daughters, I’d be curious to see how many other moms got the same swell of pride I was hit with. And most importantly, if you like the Weird West, you ignore the YA category and go get this book for yourself. No, really. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.
Who Won’t Like This Book: Some of Eff’s more unreasonable girly traits and worries might turn off a young boy, but I think so much of the story is just so adventurous, it might not matter to them. Other than that, I can’t come up with any good examples. No really, read this book.
June 16, 2011
A book which brought a mix of good and bad reactions. Set in an alternate America called Columbia during the "Go West!" era, except this is a world of magic, and Columbia is a continent seething with magical wildlife, from woolly rhinoceroses to steam dragons. Add to this Eff, the thirteenth child of a Seventh Son, sister to a double-seventh who is expected to be as powerful and lucky as the thirteenth is said (by some) to be unlucky and prone to wickedness.
The story followed the unlucky thirteenth from when she is five to eighteen. This gives the book a structure which is somewhat on the level of "life highlights", from the first horrible and unfair bullying, to the family's move far west, meeting new people, a couple of family dramas, and the gradual development of Eff's powers and attitude toward herself.
Eff is at times a frustrating person to follow. She is so terribly traumatised by her early encounters with "anti-thirteen" prejudice that she almost erases herself as a person as well as a mage. Looking back over the story, I think of nothing more than a mouse who watches and tries to do no harm, but is slowly encouraged out of hiding by a wise teacher and a good friend, until finally she has a chance to shine, and to see herself more clearly. But, though at times I wished Eff would DO instead of experience, on the whole I really liked this process and so I thoroughly enjoyed that story, and the progress to the problem which Eff is instrumental in solving.
There are two things, however, which bugged me constantly reading this book: race and gender roles.
The settlers are primarily Europeans, with an admixture of people of African heritage - descendents of slaves (though slavery at this point has been abolished). I didn't notice any sign of prejudice toward those who are African-descended, so I'm not sure if that is absent, or simply not shown. But I kept noticing a different, huge absence - the lack of "Columbians". While this alternate world is very similar to our Earth in many ways, it appears that Columbia existed in a "terra nullius" state before European settlement. This erasure of a continent's native inhabitants (possibly to prevent the problematic question of "invasion" from muddying the brave settlers narrative) constantly bothered me.
Gender roles were the other point which kept distracting me from the narrative. This is a world of magic, and it appears both men and women can possess and practice powerful magic. Both boys and girls attend school, learn spells, and can go to college. Yet all the women were concentrated on the business of husbands, children, and chores. The only woman shown in any kind of position of power or authority was a school teacher. All the professor level teachers shown were male. There was some brief mention of employed women, but I could not for the life of me determine whether there was a glass ceiling to this society, or if it was mere coincidence that all the females we met concentrated on "women's things" and (with the exception of the wonderful teacher) were, essentially, rather dull - caught up in boys, sewing or chores. They might study magic, but they used it to help wash the clothes.
Eff is the only exception to female dullness, and that only in the last quarter of the book. Her sisters, with the exception of selfish, boy-hungry Rennie, are ciphers without personality and I kept contrasting her family to E Nesbit's Bastables - even the 'girly' elder sister would have adventures _occasionally_ among the Bastables, and show some sign of life, imagination and something other than doing the chores.
So I enjoyed a lot about this story, but only by not looking at certain aspects of it.
The story followed the unlucky thirteenth from when she is five to eighteen. This gives the book a structure which is somewhat on the level of "life highlights", from the first horrible and unfair bullying, to the family's move far west, meeting new people, a couple of family dramas, and the gradual development of Eff's powers and attitude toward herself.
Eff is at times a frustrating person to follow. She is so terribly traumatised by her early encounters with "anti-thirteen" prejudice that she almost erases herself as a person as well as a mage. Looking back over the story, I think of nothing more than a mouse who watches and tries to do no harm, but is slowly encouraged out of hiding by a wise teacher and a good friend, until finally she has a chance to shine, and to see herself more clearly. But, though at times I wished Eff would DO instead of experience, on the whole I really liked this process and so I thoroughly enjoyed that story, and the progress to the problem which Eff is instrumental in solving.
There are two things, however, which bugged me constantly reading this book: race and gender roles.
The settlers are primarily Europeans, with an admixture of people of African heritage - descendents of slaves (though slavery at this point has been abolished). I didn't notice any sign of prejudice toward those who are African-descended, so I'm not sure if that is absent, or simply not shown. But I kept noticing a different, huge absence - the lack of "Columbians". While this alternate world is very similar to our Earth in many ways, it appears that Columbia existed in a "terra nullius" state before European settlement. This erasure of a continent's native inhabitants (possibly to prevent the problematic question of "invasion" from muddying the brave settlers narrative) constantly bothered me.
Gender roles were the other point which kept distracting me from the narrative. This is a world of magic, and it appears both men and women can possess and practice powerful magic. Both boys and girls attend school, learn spells, and can go to college. Yet all the women were concentrated on the business of husbands, children, and chores. The only woman shown in any kind of position of power or authority was a school teacher. All the professor level teachers shown were male. There was some brief mention of employed women, but I could not for the life of me determine whether there was a glass ceiling to this society, or if it was mere coincidence that all the females we met concentrated on "women's things" and (with the exception of the wonderful teacher) were, essentially, rather dull - caught up in boys, sewing or chores. They might study magic, but they used it to help wash the clothes.
Eff is the only exception to female dullness, and that only in the last quarter of the book. Her sisters, with the exception of selfish, boy-hungry Rennie, are ciphers without personality and I kept contrasting her family to E Nesbit's Bastables - even the 'girly' elder sister would have adventures _occasionally_ among the Bastables, and show some sign of life, imagination and something other than doing the chores.
So I enjoyed a lot about this story, but only by not looking at certain aspects of it.
dnf-or-not-gonna-happen
January 23, 2014I know this actually all went down a few years ago, but I'd essentially forgotten that this was on my TBR. I've done a lot of thinking about this book, and I've decided that, even if there are some good aspects to the book, I can't do it. I can't stomach reading a story set in the American West that erases the Native American population because the author thinks it would be too hard to write them in a non-stereotypical way. Yes, it's an alternate history, but I still don't feel like that excuses eliminating an entire racial group, particularly when it's done casually and any implications of that decision are entirely ignored. I don't mean that Native Americans don't appear in this book. Wrede has invented a world where they simply don't exist, and she made that decision because she didn't see writing Native Americans as actual people instead of stereotypes as a viable option.
There was a fair bit of discussion about this in 2009. If you're really interested, see this blog post for some expansion on why this is problematic (to say the least) and some direct quotes from Wrede on the subject. Including one where she describes Native Americans as "prepping land for human occupation".
There was a fair bit of discussion about this in 2009. If you're really interested, see this blog post for some expansion on why this is problematic (to say the least) and some direct quotes from Wrede on the subject. Including one where she describes Native Americans as "prepping land for human occupation".
February 10, 2012
A fun look at what settling the western United States would look like if magic, mammoths, and dragons were involved. Eff, the protagonist and an unlucky thirteenth child, is an utterly charming character, and Wrede has set up a wonderful world for future books that I can't wait to read!
January 31, 2021
Notes:
What a treat! Excellent alternative history-adventure story. What if magic was a part of every day life? How would that influence society, education, etc? F(rances) is a thirteenth child. Unlucky & predetermined as wicked. Thank goodness her parents did not cotton with any of that nonsense! A nice blend of folklore, frontier life and coming of age story for a girl that only wants to be normal.
What a treat! Excellent alternative history-adventure story. What if magic was a part of every day life? How would that influence society, education, etc? F(rances) is a thirteenth child. Unlucky & predetermined as wicked. Thank goodness her parents did not cotton with any of that nonsense! A nice blend of folklore, frontier life and coming of age story for a girl that only wants to be normal.
October 2, 2009
I really enjoyed the concept of this book, the idea of magic in the time of the American westward expansion, but ultimately the execution fell flat for me. A couple of things stuck out to me:
* The complete lack of Native Americans. I can see this has generated some controversy. It stuck out like a sore thumb to me and left me constantly waiting to see when Wrede would introduce them. Alternate history is fine, but you have to go way, way back to find a plausible explanation for why no people entered the middle section of North America. I mean, Columbia.
* I would have enjoyed more explanation of each type of magic. The explanations given seemed vague and a little confusing. I can chalk that up to being simply the protagonist's relatively limited knowledge of the study of magic, being young and on the frontier. However, it felt as though no one else really knew the facts, either. The description of the spells left me cold especially compared to the rich magical world of, say, Harry Potter, where I really got the feeling that Rowling had a concrete idea of what each spell and concept was supposed to do.
* The plot could have been a little more energetic. On one hand, I compared it to a book I recently read called The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Not much happens in that book, either, and it's a similar time with a similar protagonist. However, this particular book was crying out for something more interesting. It's a series, so there is definitely room to grow to a more satisfying climax, but the danger as occurred in this book left me cold.
* The character interactions felt forced in some cases and completely unrealistic in others. Telling the adult "Mr."s apart was near-impossible for me, with so little description of their appearance given; only the children's interaction with each other really felt natural.
I will definitely read the next volume in the series, but if it doesn't pick up this will be a non-starter for me.
* The complete lack of Native Americans. I can see this has generated some controversy. It stuck out like a sore thumb to me and left me constantly waiting to see when Wrede would introduce them. Alternate history is fine, but you have to go way, way back to find a plausible explanation for why no people entered the middle section of North America. I mean, Columbia.
* I would have enjoyed more explanation of each type of magic. The explanations given seemed vague and a little confusing. I can chalk that up to being simply the protagonist's relatively limited knowledge of the study of magic, being young and on the frontier. However, it felt as though no one else really knew the facts, either. The description of the spells left me cold especially compared to the rich magical world of, say, Harry Potter, where I really got the feeling that Rowling had a concrete idea of what each spell and concept was supposed to do.
* The plot could have been a little more energetic. On one hand, I compared it to a book I recently read called The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. Not much happens in that book, either, and it's a similar time with a similar protagonist. However, this particular book was crying out for something more interesting. It's a series, so there is definitely room to grow to a more satisfying climax, but the danger as occurred in this book left me cold.
* The character interactions felt forced in some cases and completely unrealistic in others. Telling the adult "Mr."s apart was near-impossible for me, with so little description of their appearance given; only the children's interaction with each other really felt natural.
I will definitely read the next volume in the series, but if it doesn't pick up this will be a non-starter for me.
June 27, 2024
I have been meaning to read this for a while now, I have always liked Patricia Wrede. It was really fun to read a full-fledged fantasy set in an alternate U.S. rather than England or somewhere else in Europe. I am looking forward to the next one.
2022 reread: I still really enjoy this book. I appreciated this time how the language changes becoming more mature as Eff grows older. It is a bit of a shame that Wrede has conveniently removed the Native Americans (or Columbians as they would be called in this alternate world) from the picture. They just do not exist at all, which simplifies the story of colonization, but still seemed a bit of a shame as there could have been yet another way to look at magic.
2024 reread: This may have become my favorite Wrede series. The issues I listed before are still there, but I really enjoy how this story unfolds and can so easily relate to Eff as a character.
2022 reread: I still really enjoy this book. I appreciated this time how the language changes becoming more mature as Eff grows older. It is a bit of a shame that Wrede has conveniently removed the Native Americans (or Columbians as they would be called in this alternate world) from the picture. They just do not exist at all, which simplifies the story of colonization, but still seemed a bit of a shame as there could have been yet another way to look at magic.
2024 reread: This may have become my favorite Wrede series. The issues I listed before are still there, but I really enjoy how this story unfolds and can so easily relate to Eff as a character.
October 16, 2020
You can't erase an entire group of people from existence just for the sake of your story.
December 9, 2011
This was surprisingly good. Though I really shouldn't be surprised as everything I've read by Patricia Wrede has been excellent. This is the first book of a new series involving magic and magical creatures in the old US while mammoths and wholly rhinoceroses roamed.
Eff Rothmer and her family moved to the Frontier when her uncle called the police on her to have her arrested (at 5 years old) because she was a potential danger to the family. As the thirteenth child, her life was viewed as cursed by everyone and she was taught (by ill-meaning relatives - but not her immediately family - and neighbors alike) that she would eventually go bad, evil that is. It's a tough way for a 5 year old to grow up. At 9 she was terrified to make friends in her new school for fear of bringing them down with her when she went bad. She was a mostly lonely child though she did have one good friend, William Graham. Her family has magic and her father teaches at the college in town. Her twin brother, Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son so he is super magical and gets all the positive attention while Eff gets all the negative since as the thirteenth child she is the bringer of doom and gloom. This book chronicles her upbringing from elementary school until she graduated high school (though they weren't called that at the time).
The difficulty of living in the Frontier is the constant fear of the wild creatures entering the city and killing the settlers. The Great Barrier (a magical shield) keeps the wild creatures - steam dragons, sphinxes, mammoths, rhinos, bison, etc - from the city but someone must always maintain the magic. With or without the danger, people are always trying to move westward. As kids graduate, they marry and join settlements that are going further west. Eff has no romantic prospects but she has decided to be a naturalist like Wash and travel to the west protecting the settlers. But that is another story, book 2 in fact, The Great Barrier. I really enjoyed this coming of age story and will continue with Eff, Lan and William's adventures in the wild west.
Eff Rothmer and her family moved to the Frontier when her uncle called the police on her to have her arrested (at 5 years old) because she was a potential danger to the family. As the thirteenth child, her life was viewed as cursed by everyone and she was taught (by ill-meaning relatives - but not her immediately family - and neighbors alike) that she would eventually go bad, evil that is. It's a tough way for a 5 year old to grow up. At 9 she was terrified to make friends in her new school for fear of bringing them down with her when she went bad. She was a mostly lonely child though she did have one good friend, William Graham. Her family has magic and her father teaches at the college in town. Her twin brother, Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son so he is super magical and gets all the positive attention while Eff gets all the negative since as the thirteenth child she is the bringer of doom and gloom. This book chronicles her upbringing from elementary school until she graduated high school (though they weren't called that at the time).
The difficulty of living in the Frontier is the constant fear of the wild creatures entering the city and killing the settlers. The Great Barrier (a magical shield) keeps the wild creatures - steam dragons, sphinxes, mammoths, rhinos, bison, etc - from the city but someone must always maintain the magic. With or without the danger, people are always trying to move westward. As kids graduate, they marry and join settlements that are going further west. Eff has no romantic prospects but she has decided to be a naturalist like Wash and travel to the west protecting the settlers. But that is another story, book 2 in fact, The Great Barrier. I really enjoyed this coming of age story and will continue with Eff, Lan and William's adventures in the wild west.
May 25, 2025
I had forgotten how much I loved this book. I'm not generally one for first-person narration, but Wrede does it brilliantly. Her main character is relatable, with a consistent voice and motivation, and (bonus) is someone I'd love to hang out with.
I look forward to sharing this one with my girls when they get a little older.
Updated 4/9/20
Sometimes, you just need an old favorite. Thirteenth Child is made up of a bunch of literary pieces that I wouldn't necessarily gravitate to, but when put together, they all work brilliantly. The audiobook is nine hours long, and I finished it in less than 24 hours, and immediately began the next one. A truly delightful book, with a lovely narrator.
Update, 3/1/21:
The Frontier Magic trilogy might be my favorite comfort read. The books are well-written, peopled with interesting characters (and Eff might just be my favorite heroine written by a contemporary author), set in a delightful historical-fantasy world, with just enough action to keep you wanting to turn pages instead of go to bed. The perfect books for when life is feeling hard, but you don't have the energy or brainpower to handle an author who demands a lot of you, like GK Chesterton (who is also fabulous, but I'm avoiding because he's too much for me right now).
Update, May 13, 2022:
Spring rolls around and I find myself ready for a re-listen of Wrede's Frontier Magic Trilogy. The weather still continues charming and the books still continue being delightful. A month or so ago, I gave the books to E, and she fell in love with them. It's been especially fun this time around to get to share in the fun with her.
I look forward to sharing this one with my girls when they get a little older.
Updated 4/9/20
Sometimes, you just need an old favorite. Thirteenth Child is made up of a bunch of literary pieces that I wouldn't necessarily gravitate to, but when put together, they all work brilliantly. The audiobook is nine hours long, and I finished it in less than 24 hours, and immediately began the next one. A truly delightful book, with a lovely narrator.
Update, 3/1/21:
The Frontier Magic trilogy might be my favorite comfort read. The books are well-written, peopled with interesting characters (and Eff might just be my favorite heroine written by a contemporary author), set in a delightful historical-fantasy world, with just enough action to keep you wanting to turn pages instead of go to bed. The perfect books for when life is feeling hard, but you don't have the energy or brainpower to handle an author who demands a lot of you, like GK Chesterton (who is also fabulous, but I'm avoiding because he's too much for me right now).
Update, May 13, 2022:
Spring rolls around and I find myself ready for a re-listen of Wrede's Frontier Magic Trilogy. The weather still continues charming and the books still continue being delightful. A month or so ago, I gave the books to E, and she fell in love with them. It's been especially fun this time around to get to share in the fun with her.
February 16, 2010
Something I really appreciated about this story was the extent to which every member of Eff's very large family was a real, distinct character - someone whose actions impacted on everyone else. Wrede has taken the extant idea of power residing in seventh sons and thirteenth children and made it unquestionably her own. In the hands of a lesser writer, the fact that Eff was a thirteenth child would have been little more than a convenient excuse with which to explain her abilities, with her twelve siblings banished to the background. Instead, the plot is driven not only by the realistic nudging of larger events, but by small, domestic struggles: disease, marriage, childbirth, scandal, and the manner in which all such family affairs require the characters to participate, change locations, argue, interact and cope. Particularly given the frontier setting, this lends an enviable realism to Wrede's world, remembering a time when families were larger, stayed closer together and when the actions of individual members had a much more profound impact on the lives of their relatives. The magic was fresh and original, the setting well-executed, the writing crisp and the characters endearing; there is not a single thing about this book I disliked. Bring on the next volume!
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