Mairelon the Magician & Magician's Ward, by Patricia C. Wrede

[sineala]

Hi internets! I herd you liek book reviews! Let me tell you about these two. They are not recent, but I only read them yesterday, so they are new to me.

Basically, they're a fairly complete duology (in omnibus as either A Matter of Magic or Malice and Magic, apparently), and they're YA fantasy Regency novels. I understand many people enjoy both of

Comments

[squeeful]

Hee, I wore out the library's copy of Mairelon the Magician when I was a kid. And I keep hoping she'll write a third book.

[sineala]

I see how it might appeal more as a kid, or at least one might be able to ignore its imperfections. There are so many books that really only work well when one is, like, fourteen. In my experience, anyway.

Like, you know, the Vanyel books I am rereading now. I am torn between admiring the sheer emo pretty of OMG THE PAIN and really seriously wondering how come I didn't know I was gay when I fourteen considering how much I used to reread all the frickin' gay angst scenes. Which are terribly, terribly angsty.

[squeeful]

Heh, I was about eleven. My reading ability far out-stripped my ability to understand what I was reading for a while.

Because clearly your identification with the omg-gay-angst was ~metaphorical~ int that you understood the feeling of not being understood and being ~different~ without actually being gay. Or something like that.

I did the opposite. I skipped a lot of the gay angst scenes for rereading the "oh, I understand!" scenes 9 times out of 10.

[sineala]

Oh, probably I identified with being ~different~. Because, you know, I couldn't be gay. I figured everyone must just think girls were pretty and being queer was, like, a Message You Got Specially From the Universe, like you had to have some kind of religious conversion experience first. I also figured that since many of my friends were gay I was likely to be straight based on probability. (No one had ever actually told me anything about what it might mean if all your friends were gay.) I was in many respects kind of incredibly stupid and I managed to come out to several people, including my mother, without any actual idea of what I really meant by what I was saying. :(

The "I understand!" scenes are also good! I reread those too!

[booksareadrug]

I like the Last Herald-Mage trilogy probably a bit more than is wise.

[sineala]

Apparently I still do as well. I only intended to reread a bit of it last night and then I somehow stayed up until 4 a.m. finishing the first one. Oh, Vanyel.