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Magic or Madness, Book Three: Magic’s Child | Justine Larbalestier

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Also not a book to jump into without having read its predecessors, Magic’s Child finds Reason Cansino wondering how her life could have changed so much in the span of two weeks. Her mother’s still locked up, she no longer hates her grandmother, Esmeralda, though she still doesn’t trust her, she has two close friends, a bundle of crazy new magic, and to ice the cake, she’s pregnant.

Of course, she’s just days pregnant, but Esmeralda saw it with her magic. Her friends Jay-Tee and Tom are sure that her creepy ancestor did it to her, while giving her his magic, but Reason and Esmeralda known the truth: the father is Jay-Tee’s brother, Danny, who Reason spent the night with in New York. She figures she needs to tell him, and head through the door to do just that. Only she catches him about ready to head out to catch a plane, on his way to visit them in Australia. And she can’t do it. Which turns out to be good, at least as far as Danny’s concerned, since he tells her that the other night shouldn’t have happened, and while he really likes her, she’s too young.

Back in Australia, a surprise visit from a Social Worker leaves Reason feeling ill at ease, since she’s sure her friends did more harm than good in trying to help her out. She’s also not looking forward to the academic testing she knew nothing about but is scheduled for in mere days.

Things take further turns for the worse as Reason goes to rescue her mother only to find she’s been kidnapped by Jason Blake, aka Alexander, aka her evil grandfather. En route to find them, Jay-Tee nearly dies, throwing one more wrench in the works. And overriding it all is the fact that Reason is changing, and incredibly fast. In a span of days she’s ceased needing to eat, can no longer feel hot or cold, has lost her hair, and to top it all off, glows. Her main struggle becomes that of humanity. To stay in the heavy, dull world she’s known her whole life, or to disappear into the world of magic: all lights and space and nothingness.

Can she save her friends and family before it’s too late? Will she stay in the world with them, and her daughter, or complete the change and become what Raul Cansino had in mind for her. If it is what he had in mind when he chose her over the rest of her family, to be the one to receive his gift.

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The Magic or Madness, Book Three: Magic’s Child | Justine Larbalestier by Jaemi, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 1:21 pm by Jaemi and is filed under Book Review, Series, Staff Favorites. Find similar posts by selecting and of the following tags: australia, family problems, fantasy, interpersonal relationships, magic, scifi, ya fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.