Book Review: How to Ditch Your Fairy
Jan. 23rd, 2009 01:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI read and enjoyed Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness trilogy (although I did have some problems with the ending), so when I heard she had a new book – How to Ditch Your Fairy – I snapped it up.
And I’m glad I did, because How to Ditch Your Fairy is charming.
In this world, the word fairy refers to an aura of a certain kind of luck – people with loose change fairies find lots of loose change, one girl has a shopping fairy that always lets her find good clothes, and our heroine, Charlie, has a parking fairy. Anyone she’s driving with finds good parking spots.
She hates this fairy like poison. Hence, the plot of the book: Charlie is willing to try anything to get rid of it.
Unfortunately for her, no one seems to know how to get rid of a fairy – or how fairies work – or where they come from, what they are, or even whether they really exist. The story is set up so all this discussion of fairies happens quite naturally, and to me these questions (which are only answered partially, or not at all) are the most compelling part of the story.
I think this is true generally of magical systems. The general advice seems to be to know exactly how and why your magic works, but I think its far more compelling to have a few general rules about how it works (just to ensure that your heroine can’t pull a fireball out of the atmosphere at a plot-crucial moment despite showing no evidence of such ability before), but to have your characters disagree about the details of how it works, or why it works that way. It’s much more interesting that way, and much more realistic.
But back to How to Ditch Your Fairy: besides the excellent execution of the concept, it’s a solid book, although not outstanding. The plot is entertaining, and the characters, while not masterpieces of psychological depth, are round enough to fill out the story. And the invented slang (for instance, describging a cute guy as pulchy, from pulchritudinous) is excellent.
I did think the ending, like the ending of the Magic or Madness triliogy, was a little too pat. But that doesn’t keep the book from being an excellent light read.
And I’m glad I did, because How to Ditch Your Fairy is charming.
In this world, the word fairy refers to an aura of a certain kind of luck – people with loose change fairies find lots of loose change, one girl has a shopping fairy that always lets her find good clothes, and our heroine, Charlie, has a parking fairy. Anyone she’s driving with finds good parking spots.
She hates this fairy like poison. Hence, the plot of the book: Charlie is willing to try anything to get rid of it.
Unfortunately for her, no one seems to know how to get rid of a fairy – or how fairies work – or where they come from, what they are, or even whether they really exist. The story is set up so all this discussion of fairies happens quite naturally, and to me these questions (which are only answered partially, or not at all) are the most compelling part of the story.
I think this is true generally of magical systems. The general advice seems to be to know exactly how and why your magic works, but I think its far more compelling to have a few general rules about how it works (just to ensure that your heroine can’t pull a fireball out of the atmosphere at a plot-crucial moment despite showing no evidence of such ability before), but to have your characters disagree about the details of how it works, or why it works that way. It’s much more interesting that way, and much more realistic.
But back to How to Ditch Your Fairy: besides the excellent execution of the concept, it’s a solid book, although not outstanding. The plot is entertaining, and the characters, while not masterpieces of psychological depth, are round enough to fill out the story. And the invented slang (for instance, describging a cute guy as pulchy, from pulchritudinous) is excellent.
I did think the ending, like the ending of the Magic or Madness triliogy, was a little too pat. But that doesn’t keep the book from being an excellent light read.
