Magic Lessons

Book: Magic Lessons (Book Two of the Magic or Madness trilogy)
Author: Justine Larbalestier
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: magical teen will either go crazy or die young- unless her gooey old ancestor can help

Reason Cansino's mother had the gift of magic, but she disavowed it; now she's in a looney bin. Reason's grandmother has the gift, but at 45 years old she's ancient for a magical one. They usually die before they're 20. Reason only discovered from her grandmother about a week ago that she has the gift as well (see Book One: Magic or Madness, for that story), and that her grandmother's back door in Sydney, Australia, actually leads to New York City (New York City?!). Just two days ago, she and a couple magical friends stopped power-hungry magic guy Jason Blake from sucking the magic out of them and taking it for himself. He's even Reason's grandfather- some grampa. Now the door is acting very strangely, swirling and bending in very un-woodlike ways, and it even spits a weird bitey sluggy thing at them. When Reason gets sucked over into the New York side, she enlists the help of Danny, the hunky older brother of her friend Jay-Tee, to help her figure out what (or who) this creature is that's guarding the door home, and why it smells like family to her. (Her magical perception manifests most strongly as smell- it works in the book a lot better than when I explain it.)

Reason's ultimate goal is to figure out a way to beat the rather limited "go mad/die young" option, in order to save herself, her friends, and maybe her mother. A few interesting twists at the end assure us that there is plenty of story left to wrap up in Book Three, Magic's Child, which according to Amazon.com will be out in March 2007. I like Larbalestier's style, and the Aussie slang is colorful, as always; JL is, indeed, Australian, so it's authentic. Another personal tidbit: she is married to Scott Westerfeld, one of my favorite authors lately. I see a lot of cross-pollination in their books, such as the importance of math and number sequences for certain magical powers. Who knows, maybe they've both dug math forever, and they actually met at an "Authors Who Love the Fibonacci Sequence" mixer. The content here gets a little, shall we say, PG-13 in places, so just be aware that it's aimed more at high-schoolish-aged teens.