Thirteenth Child: Frontier Magic, #1 -- Patricia Wrede
Eff's younger twin, Lan, is the seventh son of a seventh son. He is fated to be extremely gifted in magic, always lucky, and it is generally assumed that he Will Do Good Things. By the same token, Eff, as the Thirteenth Child born into the family, is doomed to Turn Out Bad. According to her uncle, anyway. And according to pretty much everyone else in town.
Luckily, her parents are a bit more open-minded:
"Sara, you're overset," Uncle Earn said. "I allow for a mother's partiality, but surely even you can see --"
"I can see plain enough that an angel straight from heaven itself would grow up crooked if she was watched and chivvied and told every morning and every night that she was sure to turn evil," Mama said. "And I can see equally plain that fussing and fawning over a child that hasn't even learned his numbers yet, as if he were a prince of power and wisdom, will only grow him into a swell-headed, stuck-up scarecrow of a man, who like as not will never know good advice when he hears it, nor think to ask for it when he needs it."
"You're mad," Uncle Earn said dismissively. "Daniel, I did not come here to be lectured by your wife."
"The door is right behind you," Papa said pleasantly.
BOO-YAH. I loved her parents from that moment on. (If you'd like to get a better feel for Eff's voice, there's a different excerpt at the author's website.)
So when the opportunity strikes, the family moves out west to a frontier town -- when no one knows that Eff is an unlucky thirteen, and where life will be completely different from anything they've ever experienced.
This is one of those embarrassing moments in which I have to admit that, YES, I did wait this long before reading the new Patricia Wrede book. I don't know what my problem has been lately.
Anyway, no surprise, I thought it was great. It's set in an alternate version of our world, in which the American Frontier is populated by mammoths and steam dragons and other beasties, and the people are trying to settle and farm the land without getting eaten or trampled or, just as bad though less dramatic way, losing their crops. It has much more of a historical fiction feel than a fantasy feel -- because the characters have always lived with magic in their world, they're very matter of fact about it. It's just part of life.
I loved Eff's voice, and as I mentioned, I loved her parents. The Rationalists -- people who are determined to live without magic -- were excellent, and I liked that there was a broad range of tolerance and belief within that group as well as about them.
Other than Uncle Earn and a few of the other very minor characters, every character in the book felt like a real person, with strengths and weaknesses and good points and flaws. With two big exceptions. I did feel that Miss Ochiba and Washington Morris -- who are both described as having dark skin -- seemed to fall into that Solitary Wise Person/Knowing Other archetype. But I found them both so likable that I felt a bit conflicted about my mixed feelings. I HAD MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT MY MIXED FEELINGS! Which is going a bit overboard, even for me. I have been accused of thinking about things too much.
While it's clearly the first in a series, Wrede played that aspect of it really well -- there were nuggets throughout the book that could lead into later storylines, but she didn't leave anything hanging at the end. And so, unlike so many recent fantasy series installments, it felt like an actual, honest-to-God self-contained story. IMAGINE!
I read it in one go. It isn't a roller-coaster thrill ride of an action-packed read, but from the moment Eff began her story, I was hooked on her story and felt like I was living in her world. I'm very much looking forward to the next one.
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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.
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