Magonia (ARC Review)

Magonia | Maria Dahvana Headley

Published by: HarperCollins, April 28th 2015

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Magic Realism

Pages: 320

Format: Ebook

Source: HarperCollins, via Edelweiss

Neil Gaiman’s Stardust meets John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars in this fantasy about a girl caught between two worlds…two races…and two destinies.

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. 

Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak—to live. 

So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of her medication. But Aza doesn’t think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who’s always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. Aza is lost to our world—and found, by another. Magonia. 

Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power—and as she navigates her new life, she discovers that war is coming. Magonia and Earth are on the cusp of a reckoning. And in Aza’s hands lies the fate of the whole of humanity—including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?

Magonia and me got off to an okay start, a wobbly middle, and a fantastic end. From the beginning I wasn't sure if I was into it. I liked that the main character was different in that she was dying and had a distinct personality, but it wasn't something that interested me to read. But I stuck with it, because ships in the sky. I'm glad I did.

The fantasy elements of Magonia were so well crafted and well written that it was pure magic. I want my own sky ship (though I could do without being a) blue or b) a bird.) The magic that they possess is vastly unique, too. In this book, song has power. You can sing a sandstorm or sing rock into water. It's absolutely wonderful. Bird in the lung though? Pretty rank.

This book has everything. It has romance that's raw and so genuinely teenaged. It even has a pretty terrifying threat and villain, one that you're never sure if they're bad or good or somewhere in between, another where you're led to trust them and they betray Aza so terribly (taking away her agency, making her sing against her will, literally forcing their words into her voice - it was a terrible, horrifying violation in the context of the book.) So, as I say, Magonia had everything. I just didn't connect with it as fully as I may have done had I been in a better mood - I've been crabby and slow to read and I'm certain my enjoyment of this got knocked down because of it.

To sum: a wonderfully unique story, Magonia is like nothing you've read before or will read again. 

Characters ★★★★☆

Setting/world building ★★★★☆

Writing ★★★★★

--

As seems to be the trend to post the quote from this book that struck you the most, here's the one I cannot forget:

I can't imagine a universe in which I try to unlove her.