book review the book of magic

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"The Book of Magic" is the fourth and final book in Alice Hoffman's "The Practical Magic Series."

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Alice Hoffman.

In 'The Book Of Magic,' due to hit shelves Tuesday, Oct. 12, author Alice Hoffman takes us back to the magical house on Magnolia Street, where the story of sisters Sally and Gillian Owens first began.

Book Review: Alice Hoffman's final 'Practical Magic' sequel is filled with the magic of unconditional love

Jennifer Huberdeau

Features Editor

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• Oct 8, 2021

"Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library."

And so begins the fourth and final novel in "The Practical Magic Series."

In "The Book Of Magic," due to hit shelves Tuesday, Oct. 12, author Alice Hoffman takes us back to the magical house on Magnolia Street, where the story of sisters Sally and Gillian Owens first began. It was there the orphaned sisters learned about the family curse — cast over 300 years earlier by family matriarch Maria Owens, that causes the untimely death of anyone loved by an Owens. It is where the sisters, under the care of their ancient aunts Franny and Jet Owens, learn of the magical gifts they possess as hereditary witches. And later, years after escaping from the extraordinary lives, it was where the sisters, as adults (Sally with two young daughters in tow), would return to embrace the magic and family they had left behind. 

It has been 26 years since Hoffman first published "Practical Magic" but not the first time she has brought us back here to the house, where daffodils push up through the earth a month before anywhere else, black cats are plentiful and where, if the porch light is on, those looking for help in matters of luck or love might get a bit of help. We first returned to the Owens house in 2017, in "The Rules of Magic," when in the 1960s, the Owens siblings Franny, Jet and Vincent, first learn of their magical powers when a trip to Massachusetts lands them on the doorstep of their Aunt Isabelle. 

It is on Magnolia Street the Owens siblings learn why their mother has set down certain rules: no walking in moonlight, no red shoes, no wearing black, no cats, no crows, no candles, no books about magic and most importantly, never ever fall in love. The trio uncover family secrets and begin to understand who they are, all while practicing magic and hard as they try not to, falling in love. 

In 2020, Hoffman returned with a third book, another prequel, "Magic Lessons," which details the life of Maria Owens, who, in 1620, cast the curse. Charged with witchery after falling in love with the wrong man (whom she followed from England to Salem) and exiled after escaping execution, it was Maria who built the ancestral house. 

And so, it is here, on Magnolia Street, that beloved Aunt Jet, now in her 80s, first hears the deathwatch beetle, a sound that means she has only seven days left to live. It is the sound that sets off events — the discovery of a long forgotten book, The Book of the Raven, hidden in the family library. It's a book that holds the promise of breaking the family curse, but the cure comes with the price of a great sacrifice.

It is also where we find Sally, once again shut off to the possibility of magic. Tragic events have caused her to close herself off and to, in an act of love, shield her daughters Antonia and Kylie, now grown women, from their hereditary powers and any knowledge of the family curse. But try as she might to protect them, the family curse comes calling for Kylie's true love. 

Kylie, desperate to save the love of her life, discovers the Book of Raven and begins a journey that will take her back to the land of her ancestor, the epicenter of where Maria's heart was first broken and the roots of the family curse reside. Her journey takes the majority of the Owens clan overseas as well, where long-lost brother Vincent (the only family member to escape the curse) comes out of hiding to help his sister and granddaughters track down Kylie before it's too late. For Kylie's journey has brought her directly in contact with the descendant of the man who sparked the family curse. He, too, is looking to break a curse, one that caused his family to fall from grace and fortune. But unlike Kylie, his intentions aren't pure, but born of hatred, revenge and dark desire.

Hoffman, who lives near Boston and has connections to the Berkshires (Hoffman's "The Red Garden" is set here), will surely delight fans with this final chapter of the Owens' family series, which from the first page is a homecoming of sorts. It was if I had just arrived in a memory, just out of reach, filled with warmth and comfort and the smells of a freshly baked chocolate tipsy cake the aunts serve for breakfast.

There's a magic to Hoffman's prose; delicate, deliberate and soothing. Indeed, she casts a spell that makes the reader reluctant to leave the world of the Owens family, even if just for a minute.  

The beauty of the series, and in this return to the start of the series, is that Hoffman allows her characters to not only grow, but also to retreat to old comforts, and then learn from past mistakes. Ultimately, the story of Sally and Gillian, of Franny, Jet and Vincent, of Kylie and Antonia, is one of perseverance; of secrets and curses; of dark and light; of unconditional love. It is all of those attributes that make the story of the Owens family so easy to slip back into and makes it so hard to say goodbye to them for good. 

Jennifer Huberdeau can be reached at [email protected] or 413-496-6229. On Twitter: @BE_DigitalJen

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The Book of Magic

$ 17.99

Author Alice Hoffman has written over thirty novels, plus another eight for young adults. This book is the fourth in the series following Practical Magic . Although it is claimed that one can read the books in any order, this last in the series was difficult for me to follow. Unquestioningly, fans of this series will want to have a long story about the family of witches and their adversaries. For one not given to fantasy genres, the story lacked appeal. The Owens family witches labor under a curse that sentences their beloved to certain death. The curse demands a personal sacrifice from the family, which is undertaken by the older generation. They are impelled by love and a close bond within the family. If readers have fallen under the spell of the previous books, they will certainly want to read the resolution of this story. For the rest of us, it seems overlong with distracting and unnecessary details.

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Review: The Book of Magic

Gardner Dozois writes in the introduction to THE BOOK OF MAGIC ( Amazon ) that he “[…] endeavored to cover the whole world of magic” (xv). The stories collected in this anthology cover a wide range of magical people and places. While there are plenty of wizards in robes, magic takes many shapes in this anthology. It’s no mistake that THE BOOK OF MAGIC begins and ends with comic fantasy. The energy and humor of showcased in the first and last stories propels the reader into the anthology and sends them off with a smile. The first story, K.J. Parker’s “The Return of the Pig” follows a wizard reluctantly returning to his hometown to find a new magic user, while also trying to outwit his rivals. “The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril” by Scott Lynch begins with a wizard, but ends with a sentient house and several tribes of kobolds trying to make it in a tough world. It’s funny and sweet at the same time. While these stories differ in scope and setting, they share a sense of the absurd and were some of my favorites in the collection.

There are also plenty of amusing and wry tales in between. “The Devil’s Whatever” by Andy Duncan or “No Work of Mine” by Elizabeth Bear were good examples of lightheartedness combined with tight writing. Duncan’s voice is especially strong in his story about the Devil’s son-in-law trying to extricate himself from a tricky trap laid by the old man.

Quite a few of the stories had at least some connection to an author’s previous works, whether they were returning to familiar characters or worlds. For example, the protagonist of Lavie Tidhar’s “Widow Maker” is Gorel of Goliris, whose stories are collected in Tidhar’s anthologies. I hadn’t read Tidhar before and this tale was strange and compelling, standing well on its own without the other stories as context.

THE BOOK OF MAGIC has a little bit of something for everyone... as long as you're looking for something Fantastical. A great read.

One of the few pieces that fell flat for me was “The Song of Fire” by Rachel Pollack , not because of poor writing, but because her story was so deeply enmeshed with her previous work that even the expository heavy-lifting she did couldn’t save the story for me. If you’re already a fan though, I’m sure this was a fun installment.

It was hard to choose stories to highlight for this review because the quality was high and I really enjoyed most of the offerings–this would be a great way to browse and discover authors to love. For me I also rediscovered old favorites. It’s been a while since I’ve read Megan Lindholdm (aka Robin Hobb) (“Community Service”) or Kate Elliot (“Bloom”) , and both of their selections reminded that I should remedy that soon. Lindholm’s story was a modern fantasy with a super creepy toy-eating witch while Elliot’s offering was a more traditional fantasy setting but with an interesting magic system and an unlikable protagonist who had a nice arc. Other old favorites that caught my attention included “The Staff in the Stone” by Neil Gaiman , a story of a wizard who wants to be left alone but is forced to out himself from hiding to save the village he resides in.

If you are looking for urban fantasy, Greg Van Eekhout’s “The Wolf and the Manticore” was set in LA with hints of a radically different future and some cool bone magic. If you’re looking for more slipstream, steampunk, or urban fantasy, you might be advised to look elsewhere. This is fantasy with a capital “F.”

Each story is about 30 pages, which I mention only because that’s long enough to potentially produce bloated stories stuffed with unnecessary words and characters. Luckily for readers, THE BOOK OF MAGIC contains stories that use their word count wisely to bring together fantastic characters and magic in an entertaining array. A strong anthology with a number of memorable stories, THE BOOK OF MAGIC will delight readers.

• Recommended Age: 12+
• Language: One or two stories with more language, most with very little.
• Violence: Yes. Magic can do nasty things to people, but generally not tons of gore.
• Sex: Very little. Allusions mostly.
• The Book of Magic — Amazon — Audible

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• Gardner Dozois (Ed) — Wikipedia — EBR Reviews

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Review: The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

Posted by Cindy Matthews | Nov 15, 2021 | Book Reviews | 0 |

The Book of Magic : A novel

Alice Hoffman

Simon & Schuster

The Owens family have magic in their blood. They also  bear  a n ancient  curse.  All Owens who fall in love are doomed to suffer the loss of the one they give their heart to.  W hen Kylie Owens decides  Gideon  Barnes is the man for her he’s hit by a car and lapses into a coma.  Kylie was unaware of her inherited gift for magic.  U pset at her relatives for trying to protect her from the curse,  i n an attempt to save  Gideon s he sets off alone on a quest for  he r   English  roots.  It’s then that three generations of Owens  women  decide enough is enough: the curse must be broken for good.

… an e l ega nt  and moving  story of family ties, love, and  the depths of true  commitment .

In  France t hey  recover a long-lost member of the family, a man the world thought dead for decades. With his help they trace Kylie to London  where they enlist the aid of an English ally, a man with his own reasons to love and fear magic. Learning Kylie has  g on e  to  the Owens’ ancestral town of Thornfield  they follow   to find that in her desperation  sh e’s sought help from the one man she should never have approached.  Tom Lockland,  t he descendant of the man who’d brought down the curse,  is  sour and resentful at the scorn dished out by the townsfolk. He seeks revenge on them all. Kylie might be the means to do it.  The Owens’ Unnamed Arts confront the  dark  “left-handed magic” in a battle to end  the curse and prevent another .  Only love and a willingness to sacrifice all will end the curse, but who  among them  will make that bargain?

The Book of Magi c  brings an end to the Owens family’ s  adventures in  an e l ega nt  and moving  story of family ties, love, and  the depths of true  commitment .

About The Columnist

Cindy Matthews

Cindy A. Matthews' articles and essays have appeared in over forty publications. She works as a freelance manuscript evaluator, book reviewer, and copy editor. Her writer's guide, Defeating the Slushpile Monster, was a finalist in the self-help/non-fiction category of the 2009 EPIC awards and is now available in print and in Kindle formats. More information about her editorial services and non-fiction works can be found at her web site/blog www.cindyamatthews.com Writing as Cynthianna, Cindy has published contemporary and fantasy romantic-comedies. Cindy also writes sf/paranormal erotic-romance as Celine Chatillon. See her work on Amazon.com.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman

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Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Big Magic’

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By Willa Paskin

• Sept. 16, 2015

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” sold 10 million copies and became the kind of cultural touchstone that makes its author famous, wealthy and controversial. To the book’s fans, including Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts (who starred in the movie adaptation), Gilbert’s tale of overcoming a bad divorce and deep depression by traveling to Italy, India and Indonesia in search of pleasure, devotion and balance felt like an authentic and moving search for happiness and enlightenment. To her critics, many of whom never even read it, “Eat, Pray, Love” was a cannily constructed narrative with a pat happy ending that preached personal satisfaction as the highest goal, one you could attain by throwing money around, especially in the third world.

But “Eat, Pray, Love” was published almost a decade ago, and Gilbert has spent the years since doing her best to become, once again, an author instead of a cultural phenomenon. She first wrote “Committed,” a kind of sequel, in which she percolated on the subject of marriage while making peace with marrying Felipe, the hunky Brazilian from “Eat, Pray, Love” (played, appropriately enough, by Javier Bardem in the movie). Her next book was the well-received novel “The Signature of All Things,” a period page-turner about a 19th-century female botanist, which, on a sentence level especially, served as a reminder that Gilbert had been a finalist for a National Book Award long before “Eat, Pray, Love” made her a household name.

Her follow-up to the follow-up to the follow-up is “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear,” and it returns to the self-­actualizing territory of “Eat, Pray, Love.” “Big Magic” wants to help its readers live creatively, which does not necessarily mean “pursuing a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts,” but “living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.” If you want to write or act or paint, this book wants to help you do that. But if you want to take figure skating lessons, learn to draw or build model airplanes, this book wants to help you do that too.

“Eat, Pray, Love” was a memoir, the story of a personal journey understood by many readers as a guide to greater contentment, to the point that “Eat, Pray, Love” tourism — literally following in Gilbert’s footsteps — briefly became a boom industry. “Big Magic,” by contrast, is an out-and-out self-help book, providing instructions on how to live a life as creative as Gilbert’s. “Eat, Pray, Love” was a deeply personal work, taken to be universal. “Big Magic” is a manual with universal aspirations that feels narrowly personal, a crash course in the mental habits of the highly effective person named Elizabeth Gilbert.

“Big Magic” is broken into six sections: Courage, Enchantment, Permission, Persistence, Trust and Divinity. Gilbert wonders in the first, “Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? . . . The hunt to uncover those jewels — that’s creative living.” If the creativity inside of you has not burrowed deeper than ever before upon hearing itself referred to as a “treasure” and “jewels,” it is more stalwart than mine. But Gilbert spends much of the book coaxing out even the shyest creativity with a kind of extended pep talk: Creativity is inside all of us, it should be expressed, and it is not selfish or crazy or foolish to do so — it is, in fact, the best way to live a satisfying life. Gilbert’s advice reads like a positive fortune cookie: a nice surprise you will forget once the taste of won tons has faded from your mouth. Creativity is “your birthright as a human being”; “Even if you grew up watching cartoons in a sugar stupor from dawn to dusk, creativity still lurks within you”; “You are not required to save the world with your creativity.”

It is on the subject of how to foster one’s creativity that Gilbert parts with pabulum and dives into something more mystical and mystifying. Gilbert believes that ideas have agency. “Ideas have no ma­teri­al body, but they do have consciousness, and they most certainly have will,” she writes. When this idea “finally realizes that you’re oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else,” but sometimes, “the idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you.” Gilbert does not appear to be using this as a helpful metaphor, though she invites her readers to do so if that’s what it takes for the magical mumbo jumbo to go down. As proof of the agency of ideas, she tells a story about an idea she had for a novel set in the Amazon that she neglected for so many years that it left her — and took up residence with her friend the novelist Ann Patchett. Gilbert also suggests that an idea about Ozzy Osbourne and his zany family visited her once, but after she ignored it, it graced MTV instead.

This philosophy of creativity, in which ideas have willpower and are delivered to patient human beings in the correct state of mind, is a diluted riff on the “law of attraction” outlined in Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret,” another Oprah-anointed self-help book (and movie), in which “positive thinking” is said to attract positive outcomes. You get back the vibes you put out into the world. (New Age-y as this sounds, it also jibes with certain strands of religious belief, in which good fortune is visited upon the deserving.) Gilbert is not suggesting, as “The Secret” does, that the right attitude will fend off bankruptcy and cure cancer. But imagining that ideas have a will of their own is a cute way of getting to feel blessed by a higher power when one is inspired — at the expense of turning ideas into judgmental gatekeepers, darting around in the atmosphere, eschewing anyone who isn’t inclined to be chipper and cheerful, as if no one with a bad attitude ever deserved to make stuff too.

In broad strokes, “Big Magic” constitutes good advice. Find some time in your life to do something you really enjoy, for no reason other than you really enjoy it. Not a bad fortune cookie. But in explaining how to go about accomplishing this, Gilbert keeps running into an unexpected problem: her own seemingly pristine habits of mind. The woman that emerges in “Big Magic” shares a voice — charming, personable, self-aware, jokey and conversational in the extreme — with the narrator of “Eat, Pray, Love,” but she does not seem to share any of her neuroses.

In the chapter on fear, Gilbert writes, “The only reason I can speak so authoritatively about fear is that I know it so intimately,” referring to a childhood in which she was terrified of everything from the telephone to board games. But Gilbert goes on to say that an effective way to curtail fear is to give it a speech like this: “Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. . . . But understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. . . . Dude, you are not even allowed to touch the radio.” Does your fear respond to being spoken to so reasonably? Because it seems to me that fear’s inability to respond to reason, or to the honorific “Dude,” is one of its signal characteristics. It’s not rational — it’s scared.

Throughout “Big Magic,” Gilbert glosses over the hardest parts of creative living — not just being terrified, but handling rejection and doubt, and doing the work no matter what. These are all things that, God bless her, seem to come pretty easily to Elizabeth Gilbert. (She got over fear as a teenager when she “realized that my fear was boring.”) Gilbert explains, in passing, that even without inspiration, she sits down and works — this is how she expresses her openness to the universe. Gilbert makes her work ethic seem, at worst, like an afterthought and, at best, like magic’s equal partner, when it is the essential ingredient. This amounts to a kind of false humility; it soft-pedals the tough stuff that Gilbert does so well, to accentuate the magic she has little control over. It is much harder to emulate Gilbert’s devotion and implacable self-​­confidence than to say aloud, “I’m a writer,” as she suggests you do, and expect that upon “hearing this announcement, your soul will mobilize accordingly.”

Creative Living Beyond Fear

By Elizabeth Gilbert

276 pp. Riverhead Books. $24.95.

Willa Paskin is the television critic at Slate.

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The Rules of Magic: A Novel (2) (The Practical Magic Series) Paperback – June 26, 2018

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• Part of series Practical Magic
• Print length 400 pages
• Language English
• Publication date June 26, 2018
• Dimensions 5.25 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• ISBN-10 1501137484
• ISBN-13 978-1501137488
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atria Books; Reprint edition (June 26, 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1501137484
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1501137488
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.1 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• #212 in Occult Fiction
• #1,962 in American Literature (Books)
• #2,296 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Alice hoffman.

Alice Hoffman is the author of thirty works of fiction, including Practical Magic, The Dovekeepers, Magic Lessons, and, most recently, The Book of Magic. She lives in Boston. Her new novel, The Invisible Hour, is forthcoming in August 2023. Visit her website: www.alicehoffman.com

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Book Review: The Magic by Rhonda Byrne

by Tony Rubleski

The Magic by Rhonda Byrne. I picked this book up a few years ago and it immediately captured my ‘Mind’ as it arrived just when I needed it. While its author, Rhonda Byrne, is best known for her first book, the global phenomenon, The Secret , I can honestly say that I think this book is much better. It not only drills deeper, but has many excellent exercises one can do to improve their life and mental well-being.

After reading it again this week I was struck by how many gems of wisdom had stuck with me and how many things I’d forgotten. Going through the book again made me realize just how good it is and that reviewing at least once a year would be a good thing to do.

Under the Cover

Here are just a few of the things you’ll discover in the pages of the book, The Magic:

• The power of counting your blessings and not your problems
• How to achieve magical relationships and employ forgiveness
• Simple, yet effective ways to set goals and get started on them right away
• How to attract better people, situations and opportunities into your life
• Why positive thinking and gratitude are the magic combination to greater happiness
• Effective ways to deal with setbacks in life and how to keep moving forward

Here’s a great quote from the book on page 15:

“Gratitude can magically turn your relationships into joyful and meaningful relationships, no matter what state they are in now.”   – Rhonda Byrne

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MAGIC LESSONS

by Alice Hoffman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 2020

Master storyteller Hoffman’s tale pours like cream but is too thick with plot redundancies and long-winded history lessons.

Set in late-17th-century England and America, the pre-prequel to Hoffman’s Practical Magic (1995) and The Rules of Magic (2017) covers the earliest generations of magically empowered Owens women and the legacy they created.

In 1664, Hannah Owens, practitioner of “the Nameless Art” sometimes called witchcraft, finds baby Maria abandoned near her isolated cottage in Essex County, England. She lovingly teaches ancient healing methods to Maria, whose star birthmark indicates inherent magical powers; and since Hannah considers ink and paper the most powerful magic, she also teaches Maria reading and writing. After vengeful men murder Hannah in 1674, Maria escapes first to her unmotherly birth mother, a troubled practitioner of dark, self-serving magic, then to Curaçao as an indentured servant. At 15 she is seduced by 37-year-old American businessman John Hathorne (his name an allusion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote about mistreatment of marked women). Enchanted by the island, Puritan Hathorne loses his rigidity long enough to impregnate Maria before returning to Salem, Massachusetts, without saying goodbye. Maria, with new daughter Faith, whose birthmark is a half-moon, follows him. The ship on which she travels is captained by a Sephardic Jew who gives her passage in return for treating his son’s dengue fever, an excuse for Hoffman to link two long-standing unfair persecutions—of smart women as witches and Jews as, well, Jews. That Maria will find a truer love with warmhearted Jewish sailor Sam than with icy Hathorne makes sense in terms of later Owens women’s stories. For the earlier books to work, Maria must found her female dynasty in Salem, but first she and Faith face betrayals, mistakes, and moral challenges. Maria uses her powers to help others but often misreads her own future with devastating results; separated from Maria during her childhood, emotionally damaged Faith is tempted to use her grandmother’s selfish “left-handed” magic.

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-982108-84-7

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | PARANORMAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Alice Hoffman

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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by Kristin Hannah

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PERSPECTIVES

BOOK TO SCREEN

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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by Max Brooks

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Rainbow magic series, common sense media reviewers.

Friends' fairy adventures are fun intro to fantasy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Lessons about friendship and ingenuity.

Friendship, quick thinking, creativity, ingenuity,

Kirsty and Rachel are polite, responsible, enthusi

Each adventure finds Kirsty, Rachel, and their fai

Parents need to know that the Rainbow Magic series is made up of several smaller sets of seven adventures, for a total of more than 200 individual books. Each story follows best friends Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker as they help their fairy friends resolve a problem involving bad guy Jack Frost and his goblin minions…

Educational Value

Positive messages.

Friendship, quick thinking, creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance inevitably save the day. Even "bad guys" can be sympathetic; sometimes they do mean things because they feel sad or hurt. You can solve problems without fighting. The fairies represent a wide range of hair/skin colors and style choices, though there isn't much variation in body type.

Positive Role Models

Kirsty and Rachel are polite, responsible, enthusiastic, and all-around exemplary tweens. They're delighted to help the fairies whenever they can, and they always use their brains to figure out problems to potentially tricky situations. The fairies are sweet, positive, and friendly. Jack Frost and his goblins are nasty (in a mild way), but sometimes even they have sympathetic moments.

Violence & Scariness

Each adventure finds Kirsty, Rachel, and their fairy friends in some kind of danger/peril (typically while trying to outsmart Jack Frost and his goblins), but it's usually quite mild and resolves quickly. Jack Frost can speak cruelly, which might bother kids who don't like meanness.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the Rainbow Magic series is made up of several smaller sets of seven adventures, for a total of more than 200 individual books. Each story follows best friends Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker as they help their fairy friends resolve a problem involving bad guy Jack Frost and his goblin minions. Each story follows best friends Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker as they help their fairy friends resolve a problem involving bad guy Jack Frost and his goblin minions. Though the stories are all pretty similar, they're a fine introduction to fantasy adventures for young kids; there's always some kind of suspense or mild peril, but it's always resolved quickly and painlessly. And Kirsty and Rachel are model tweens -- respectful, polite, helpful, and clever (they usually use their brains to outwit the bad guys, rather than brawn) -- who value their friendship and their secret alliance with the fairies. These books are great for read-aloud.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (7)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Fine stories that get a new reader excited

Motivate independent reading but don't make me read another, what's the story.

The RAINBOW MAGIC SERIES follows best friends Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker, tweens who first meet during family vacations to Rainspell Island, where they help Ruby the Red Fairy and get involved in the first of many adventures to come. In each set of seven books in the series, the two girls meet a new group of seven fairies, all of whom have something in common (rainbow magic, weather magic, party magic, flower magic, and so on) and all of whom are somehow at risk of losing their magic because of a plot by the mean Jack Frost, who's usually motivated by a feeling such as jealousy or greed. The fairies (who are led by King Oberon and Queen Titania) recruit Kirsty and Rachel for help, typically in the form of recovering some kind of magic item that's also the target of Jack Frost's minions, the bumbling goblins. Inevitably, the girls face some kind of challenge or peril, think quickly to save the day, and help restore peace to Fairyland ... until the next time the magic finds them.

Is It Any Good?

This series won't win any awards for originality -- once you've read one of these books, you've pretty much read all 200+ -- but it's a sweet, fun introduction to fantasy for young children. The dangerous situations and quickly resolved cliffhangers are both fast-paced enough to keep kids interested and mild enough to ensure that those who aren't ready for anything edgier won't get too stressed about what's going to happen to Kirsty and Rachel. There's a somewhat stereotypically "girly" focus on fashion (the outfits of Rachel, Kirsty, and the fairies are always carefully described), but at least the fairies have a wide range of hair and skin colors and clothing styles.

If you're reading these aloud to your kids, once you're used to the books' pattern, you may find your mind wandering to bigger-picture questions -- just how many weeks off school do these girls have, anyway? And why aren't there any boy fairies? -- but as series for young readers go, Rainbow Magic is a fine choice. It's not a problem to read the different subsets of books out of order (any references made to other adventures are quick and in passing), and it's possible that a little fairy magic could encourage kids on the verge of "real" reading to make the final leap, which is always a good thing.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what kids like about the Rainbow Magic series. Is it the characters? The plots? How are the different adventures similar to one another? What sets one group of books apart from the other?

What makes Kirsty and Rachel such good friends? Do you have any friends you're that close to? What kinds of adventures have you had together?

Which other book series do you like? What do they have in common?

Book Details

• Author : Daisy Meadows
• Illustrator : Georgie Ripper
• Genre : Fantasy
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Princesses, Fairies, Mermaids, and More , Friendship , Great Girl Role Models
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Scholastic Inc.
• Publication date : May 1, 2005
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 4 - 8
• Number of pages : 80
• Available on : Paperback, Audiobook (unabridged), iBooks, Kindle
• Last updated : October 30, 2020

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Our editors recommend.

The Magic School Bus Series

Magic Tree House Series

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Fairy tales for kids, books about friendship, related topics.

• Magic and Fantasy
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Book Reviews

'darker shade' paints a fantasy world rich in depth and color.

Tasha Robinson

A Darker Shade of Magic

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One of the most compelling things about V.E. Schwab's second adult novel, A Darker Shade Of Magic , is how long it takes to develop a plot. Once the main arc finally slips fully out of the shadows, it turns out to be fairly standard for a fantasy novel: Evil scheming magicians, cursed and forbidden item, dark magic ready to consume everything it touches.

But Schwab takes her time in getting there. She builds a setting elaborate and unfamiliar enough that it matters once the familiar tropes start threatening it. The book could have been compulsively readable even without a major conflict — like Katherine Addison's recent standout fantasy novel The Goblin Emperor , A Darker Shade Of Magic is set in a world idiosyncratic enough that it doesn't need to be threatened to be compelling.

Schwab's backdrop involves four parallel worlds with four parallel Londons, each with a different history, ruler, and society. Only the Antari — the increasingly rare people born with magic in their blood — can naturally traverse these worlds, so they serve as liaisons between the rulers of the three surviving Londons. The book's opening protagonist, an Antari named Kell, thinks of them by color: Grey London, a mundane place where magic is scarce; Red London, his home, a warm place of copious magic; White London, a brutal world starving for resources, magic included; and Black London, an obliterated world consumed by greed for magic.

Kell is an appealingly complicated character, part put-upon functionary, part natural resource for the London rulers who see him, variously, as an exotic visitor, a useful tool, or a potential pet. There are elements of Diana Wynne Jones' nine-lived magician Chrestomanci in the way Kell revels in his magic while despairing over his duties, and the way he tries to carve out a personal life for himself, including illegally collecting little otherworldly tokens. He's accorded a deep respect in Red London, but he has little freedom, and few true connections. Dangerously, his self-pity doesn't leave him enough room to pity other people in worse situations, like his White London counterpart Holland, a soul-shackled slave of that world's sadistic tyrants. But his sense of responsibility and morality drag him into helping when he might rather sit home and brood over his knickknacks.

V. E. Schwab is also the author of Vicious and The Near Witch. Courtesy of Tor Books hide caption

V. E. Schwab is also the author of Vicious and The Near Witch.

His opposite in every way is the book's other focus: Delilah Bard, an amoral Grey London pickpocket scrabbling to survive in poverty, but with all the freedom she wants, and a few more emotional connections than she'd like. Lila and Kell don't even meet until more than a quarter of the way through the book.

Up to that point, Schwab isn't just world-building, she's four-worlds-at-once building. In particular, she has to establish her peculiar and subtle rules of magic, equal parts manipulation of blood, will, and subtler factors like respect. (At one point, Kell accomplishes a difficult magical task essentially by begging the stones of a wall to cooperate.) But more significantly, she spends time with Kell, Lila, Holland, and their separate worlds, in no particular rush to tie them all together.

Her characters make the book. Just as Kell has layers, Lila is a satisfyingly rich invention: Single-minded, selfish, often unsympathetic, Lila would rather be a swashbucking pirate queen than a hero's arm-candy. Kell and Lila are as much rivals as allies, and when a dangerous smuggled artifact threatens all the remaining Londons, she's refreshingly interested in stealing it rather than destroying it. The plot comes late, but it comes naturally and easily, born out of the tensions between Holland's compulsions, Kell's reluctant sense of duty, and Lila's ambition.

Schwab also wrote the 2013 superhero deconstruction novel Vicious , and she writes young-adult and mid-grade fiction as Victoria Schwab. A Darker Shade Of Magic reads with the ease of a young-adult novel, with short paragraphs, quick-moving prose, and plenty of action. But it's grimmer even than the current bout of post- Hunger Games YA. Likeable characters die, badly. Torture, for pleasure or gain, happens frequently. The villains are monstrous, and the stakes are high, threatening all the worlds. But the stakes feel higher because Schwab takes the time to make a world worth getting lost in. Darker Shade Of Magic resolves its plot thoroughly, but still feels like it could be the seed of a lengthy series. With so many worlds on the map, there's plenty left to discover.

Tasha Robinson is a senior editor at The Dissolve .