A Tale of Magic... (A Tale of Magic, #1) in What's the Name of That Book???

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Mar 26, 2021 Kate rated it liked it

Shelves: juvenile, fiction, youngadult, sci-fi_fantasy, speculative, read-to-e, 2021

While I appreciated the social allegory and some striking plot points, reading this huge tome out loud to my 8 year old daughter was a slog. It begins with a prologue containing far too much exposition on the political history of the book's four-kingdomed world. It's a lot to take in, esp for kids, and not at all interestingly conveyed. I think my daughter followed it to the extent that it resembled the convoluted backstory of "Frozen 2," which she seems to have mostly grokked after about a doze While I appreciated the social allegory and some striking plot points, reading this huge tome out loud to my 8 year old daughter was a slog. It begins with a prologue containing far too much exposition on the political history of the book's four-kingdomed world. It's a lot to take in, esp for kids, and not at all interestingly conveyed. I think my daughter followed it to the extent that it resembled the convoluted backstory of "Frozen 2," which she seems to have mostly grokked after about a dozen viewings.

Once we step into the torturous daily life of the protagonist, Brystal Greenwood, things pick up: Brystal is sneaking around reading books delivered in secret (extensive reading is forbidden to females, though basic literacy is taught in order for them to shop and follow instructions) by her favorite older brother, and hiding them under a floorboard. Her father is an important High Justice, and her two elder brothers are on his career path, the mean one already a Justice, and the nice one studying for his Justice exams. Brystal is admonished when she's caught helping her nice brother study in another expository scene that drags on far too long, in which she gives him Q&A on specific ordinances that led to the outlawing of magic in kingdoms. This is provided with way too much information. At the very least, the crux -- that nonhuman, magic beings were, centuries ago, cruelly driven into a lawless central forest called the In-Between, and lurk there still -- could have been explained without detailing a batch of academically named laws, confusingly explained out of chronological order. I briefly wondered if I was going to be tested on these later, myself.

After her brother goes off to Justice school, leaving Brystal, now enrolled at an insufferable Stepford Wife-style school, without a source for books, she gets a forbidden job at the library, from which she sneaks home one book to read a week (yet somehow reads the entire first floor's catalogue in one month. New math? Very small first floor?). Here, Brystal finds a secret study room for Justices, with secret books about magic, including one that argues that magic - the work of fairies - is good and helpful, and distinct from witchcraft - the work of, well, you know. Two incantations are provided to assess whether one's magical proclivities are of one versus the other. Brystal finds out that she has magical powers. ("It's starting to pick up now, I think!" I told my daughter optimistically. She nodded hopefully.)

When she's found out as magical, there's an actually very clever scene of her criminal trial with a sick twist, and she is sent to a kind of prison for magical girls. From there, the grand fairy Madame Weatherberry -- author of the book on fairy magic vs witchcraft -- rescues Brystal as one of two recruits for her new academy of magical arts from the Northern Kingdom, the only kingdom whose sovereign has (just barely and almost by force) agreed to allow citizens to enroll in such a progressive institution.

From this point (about halfway) on, Brystal acquires other magical classmates (one from her Kingdom, one from the In-Between, and one from traveling carnival workers who apparently can't stand working or living with their daughter any longer), and they learn to use and control their magic, and eventually use it to fight a dangerous witch, the Snow Queen, who is blasting one kingdom and then the entire world with hurricane-force blizzards. For some reason, also from this point on, the 3rd person limited POV occasionally treads lightly into 3rd omniscient, randomly projecting students' inner thoughts and feelings for just a sentence. This was probably unnoticed by my daughter, but it annoyed me. Commit! The story ends with all the requisite triumphs and almost unbearably long-winded exposition about the meaning of it all.

I found myself eager to finish this book not out of excitement for the legitimately imaginative plot, but because the relentless telling-not-showing was grueling to read, especially aloud. There were so many opportunities for the kind of imagery that sucks you into the story and doesn't let you forget it, and they were inevitably squandered. I found myself flipping through my juvenile fiction collection, thirsty for Joan Aiken or Randall Jarrell to describe something to me with just the right words, and NOT TOO MANY. Colfer doesn't completely eschew descriptive text, but it's so minimal as to be nonexistant. It's like a child describing a Disney movie: this happened, and then this, and he thought that. It's like... this review. ...more

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Oct 01, 2019 katayoun Masoodi marked it as tbr-ebook

Shelves: ebook, fantasy, children

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Feb 22, 2020 Lisa Vegan marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: childrens, fiction, books-about-books, novel, speculative-fiction

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