The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

   This was a long and arduous read. It’s not that I didn’t like it. It is quite good. The writing is beautifully, truly beautiful. There’s an honesty about the brutality of slavery and all those involved (included abolitionists) that I haven’t seen in many books on the subject. Still, it is about slavery and right now I could do with fewer reminders of Black people being terrorized and murdered.

A few passages that I liked:

Bored whites were barbarian whites. While they played at aristocrats, we were their well-appointed and stoic attendants. But when they tired of dignity, the bottom fell out. New games were anointed and we were but pieces on the board. It was terrifying. (page 27)

The Underground would give me no chance to reconsider, for though we all dreamed of going north, all sorts of fears might overrun a man when the dream descended into the real. There is always a part of us that does not want to win, wants to stay down in the low and familiar. (page 185)

Corrine Quinn was among the most fanatical agents I ever encountered on the Underground. All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. They had seen women carried off to fancy, or watched as a father was stripped and beaten in front of his child, or seen whole families pinned like hogs into rail-cars, steam-boats, and jails. Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the base practice, it served to remind them how easily they might to de the same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave. (pages 370-371)

 

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

In the acknowledgments the author wrote that this book was about the friends and family that hold us together, uncertainty, learning to accept love and support and how scary and hard a skill that can be to learn (I like the notion of learning to accept love and support as a skill), and about doing hard things un-alone. I suppose that is as good as explanation as any.

The story begins with a dead boy and his exploded penis. Alexis was trying to lose her virginity with Josh Harper when she inadvertently caused his penis to explode with her magic. Yes, magic. Alexis and her five best friends can all do magic. Each has a particular gift. Alexis can communicate with animals. She doesn't talk to them in words exactly, but understands them and they understand her. One of the other girls can do something similar with plant life, especially trees. Another can heal. They don't know where their magic came from or why they can do it. They just can. They're still experimenting and learning what they can do. They don't know the extent of their powers. Josh's spontaneous explosion is as much as a surprise to Alexis as it no doubt was to Josh. She had no idea she could do something like that.

Alexis calls her friends for help. Together the six of them try to figure out how to fix, or failing that, how to deal with the situation. Being seniors in high school, Josh is only one of many things they have to deal with. There is college to think about, family members to contend with, and unarticulated feelings to express.

I enjoyed reading about the deep friendship among the six girls but there was a slight disconnect. The death of a person is a big deal and yet Josh doesn't matter much even though the actions of the girls revolve around concealing his death. His death was merely a way into the story. Little is revealed about Josh or the way the magic in this story works and why these six random girls can do magic. I want to think the magic was a metaphor for the power girls and women have but don't always realize they have. Alas, that is just a guess.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

  Ivy didn't get the magic gene. Her twin sister, Tabitha, did. Magic divided Tabitha and Ivy. Tabitha went off to magic school while Ivy lived in the regular world, which unfortunately included watching her mother die slowly and painfully from cancer. As an adult, Ivy makes a living as a private investigator, mostly investigating cheating spouses. Then Ms. Torres, headmistress of a nearby high school for magical teenagers walks into Ivy's office and offers her a job: find out who murdered Sylvia, one of the teacher's at the school.

On Goodreads many have classified this as mystery and fantasy. I agree with the mystery part, but would place it in the category of magical realism rather than fantasy. There is the real world as most of us know it and then there is small group of people called who happen to be able to do magic. Most people don't know magic is real. Mages are not totally separate from the rest of the population. Ivy is chosen for the detective job despite being non-magical because she is one of the few who know magic exists.

The mystery itself is not that mysterious. I guessed the who, why, and how about half way through. Still I enjoyed the journey. There was a lot going on in this book. Ivy's life isn't quite what she wanted to be and this job among new people gives her a chance to try being a new Ivy. It also gives her chance to work on her relationship with her twin. While working on those two things and trying to solve a mystery, she also has to deal with a teenage drama. It's a lot but it all comes together nicely.

I don't know if this is this is a one-off or the start of a series. I hope for the latter. A non-magical female detective solving magical mysteries, I am down for that.