Your Humble Blogger had really enjoyed Magic or Madness, and the library had the second book in the trilogy, so I picked it up and read it. It’s generally a mistake for me to read a second book soon after an enjoyable first book, as often I enjoyed the world-building in the first book, and find the second book lacking in that, as the world is already built. Also, many second books have a plot problem, because they have neither the revealed nature of the Quest, nor the conclusion to it. For a second book to work both as an individual book and as a middle to a three-book arc, either the Quest has to be completed and a new one begun, which makes the three-book arc less smooth, or the Quest has to be transformed.
In this case, neither happens. In fact, reading Magic Lessons pointed something out to me that I had missed: I don’t know what the Quest is in M or M. To some extent, Reason is just trying to stay alive and figure out what is going on around her. That’s an awfully reactive Quest, though. She would like to save/cure her mother, but she doesn’t actually do anything toward that.
It turns out, toward the end of the first book, that Reason is faced with the title choice, that is, whether to practice magic or to go mad. Sadly, practicing magic is also deadly, as the only way to stay alive past her twenties seems to be to become a sort of vampire. Still, she’s only fifteen, and there isn’t any real question whether she will deny the magic and go crazy or give in to the magic. And, of course, if she doesn’t do magic, there’s not much reason to write a book about her.
The second book has a villain who turns out not to be a villain, and what seems to be a way out of the Magic (and early death) or Madness fork. While the villainy-that-wasn’t was interesting and fun, it seemed a bit of a cop-out. On the other hand, Justine Larbalestier has proven awfully good at twisting things, making seemingly innocent people seem suddenly villainous, then less villainous, then more, and so on; Reason and the reader are never on sure ground. So it seems likely enough that the Third Way on which Reason has embarked is Not What It Seems.
One more thing: Reason (a fifteen-year-old autistic girl with what must be described as a fatal illness) has sex with an eighteen-year-old boy. Good, hot, fun, consensual sex, somewhat elliptically described, but clearly Earth-Moving, if you know what I mean. That seems a much bigger deal than the use of the word scrotum in a YA book. She does get pregnant, so it’s not like it’s without consequence, but it’s also clear that she is happy that she jumped the guy, whether she ever sees him again or not. I wasn’t offended or anything, and on the whole I think it’s worthwhile to let Young Adults know that sex can be, you know, enjoyable, so they don’t realize we’re lying about everything else, but it was startling to me, since I’m pretty sure none of the YA books I’ve read over the last several years have had any happy sex in them at all.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.