Book Review Tuesday (8/1/23) – Magonia

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy August! I always look forward to my birthday month, but…I could do without everybody posting that one Taylor Swift song (sorry swifties my neighbors blasted it over and over when I was in school and I can’t take it any longer 😭)

This book has been on and off my TBR over the years; I feel like I put it on my list when I first got Goodreads, lost interest in it a few years later, then got it recommended to me by a friend who saw it on another list. The reviews don’t lie: Magonia really was a strange book, but despite some of its flaws, its strangeness was 100% its strength.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Magonia (Magonia, #1) – Maria Dahvana Headley

All of her life, Aza Ray Boyle has had a mysterious lung disease, incapable of being diagnosed by all kinds of doctors. She can barely breathe or speak without assistance, even with the copious medications prescribed to her. But recently, Aza has begun to see giant ships in the sky. Her parents chalk these visions up to her medication, but Aza knows that something in the sky is waiting for her—and it is. But after a freak accident leads her family to believe that she is dead, Aza is swept up into the world of Magonia, a world of skyfaring ships where she can finally breathe. But as she discovers her hidden Magonian heritage, she discovers that this idyllic world in the clouds is not as peaceful as she once thought—and that the world below may be in danger…

TW/CW: fantasy violence, death/funeral, themes of grief

To put it plainly, Magonia was a weird book. For a YA book that was published in 2015, it feels a lot more daringly weird than most YA books got back then and still do today. Magonia was Maria Dahvana Headley’s first YA novel, and it shows, but not necessarily in a bad way; despite its flaws, it was a refreshingly quirky addition to the pantheon of early to mid-2010’s YA.

I’ve seen this book shelved as having disability rep, and that’s part of why I decided to pick it up again. Aza has a lung disease, but it’s fictional; all of her life, doctors cannot seem to diagnose her, until it is discovered that the disease happens to be a whole bird growing in her chest that factors into the book about a third of the way through. And…I’m torn on whether or not to call it disability rep. On the one hand, the descriptions of Aza’s life before the bird revelation match a lot of other stories I’ve read about people and fictional characters with breathing-related illnesses and disabilities, what with being constantly in and out of hospitals and struggling to fit in with one’s peers. And on the other hand…it feels a little strange, as a disabled reader, to categorize having a fictional ailment of bird growing out of your chest as a disability, especially since the problem resolves itself almost immediately once Aza arrives in Magonia. My issue isn’t that this plotline exists—it’s the category of others labeling this as disability rep that feels questionable to me.

That aside, Magonia was a refreshing novel to read! Especially for a YA book published in 2015, when the industry was so mired in self-serious Hunger Games rip-offs, the unapologetic weirdness of this novel felt like a breath of fresh air, even almost a decade later. We need more whimsy like this in YA—it shouldn’t just be reserved for middle grade. The whimsy doesn’t just die when you hit the age of 13! (Or, at least, it shouldn’t.) I loved the world that Headley created, full of winged people, whales that swim through the sky and giant bats (CREATURES YEAAAAAAAH) and massive frigates that patrol the skies. Headley put so much love into this part of the worldbuilding, and it shone through in every page. It did not hold back in its magical fun, and I am so much better for it.

I’ve seen a lot of reviews saying that they didn’t like how Aza’s voice was written, and to a point, I can understand it. From the looks of it, most of Headley’s body of work is aimed at adults, so it makes sense that she felt as though she had to tone it down and write Aza in a certain, “teenagery” way. But for the most part, I feel like it worked—Aza really did read like she was really 15 going on 16: despite her circumstances, she was still an angsty teenager, but that wasn’t her whole personality. She reacted to her situation as a real teenager would, had her priorities set where a teenager would have them. Aza really was a teenager, and teenagers tend to over-exaggerate things sometimes. It wasn’t all over-exaggeration, though—it was just the right amount of drama and realistically being frightened by everything going on around her, because who wouldn’t be?

However, as engrossed I was with the whimsical fantasy worldbuilding, I found the ending to be quite messy. I get that it’s the first book in the series, but Magonia could have been wrapped up in a much neater and more cohesive way. Details that were only given in the last 50 pages suddenly had utmost importance to the plot, all of the loose ends got even looser, and everything felt generally rushed. Looking back on how much I enjoyed the worldbuilding, it feels like a case of paying too much attention to that and not enough to how the plot would actually play out. Everything felt crammed together and sped through in such an unceremonious way. It’s why I felt like I couldn’t quite give this novel a full 4 stars; the ending made the rest of the intricacies earlier into a rushed mess.

All in all, a refreshingly weird YA fantasy that excelled in its whimsical worldbuilding, but failed in the messy pacing of the ending. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

Magonia is the first in the Magonia series, followed by Aerie. Maria Dahvana Headley is also the author of The Mere Wife, Queen of Kings, Some Gods of El Paso, and many other novels and short stories. Headley also translated a modern version of Beowulf in 2020.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!