Review: Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Magonia
by Maria Dehvana Headley 

published on April 28th, 2015 by HarperCollins
young adult | fantasy | adventure

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Aza Ray is drowning in thin air.

Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak—to live.

So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of her medication. But Aza doesn’t think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.

Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who’s always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. Aza is lost to our world—and found, by another. Magonia.

Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power—and as she navigates her new life, she discovers that war is coming. Magonia and Earth are on the cusp of a reckoning. And in Aza’s hands lies the fate of the whole of humanity—including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?

I was shocked when I saw that Neil Gaiman had blurbed this random book with a weird name.  Obviously, I had to read it.  Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors for good reason: he captures the dark, yet whimsical side of fantasy few others touch.  Well, Magonia deserves all its praise.  It’s a fantastical pirate opera with quirky-cool characters, an original mythology, and innovative writing.

Yes, I said freaking pirate opera.  But it starts out sneakily, with Aza and Jason.  They’re adorable super-nerds who compete to see who can acquire the most obscure knowledge (whether that be Tibetan throat singing or the first 50,000 digits of pi).  They’re also adorably sort of kind of into each other, and sort of kind of clueless.  It’s the perfect recipe for a young adult contemporary romance geekier than John Green’s wildest dreams.

But Aza is no normal girl.  She’s drowning in the air.  Every breath is a struggle and a gift.  Despite my dubiousness towards the recent rash (har har, see what I did there?) of allergy/medical anomaly books, I went in with an open mind.  I was rewarded with the wonders of Magonia, a world-in-the-air.  Headley vividly unfolds a world of blue-skinned mages who sing the rain, servile bird-humans, sky ships, Squallwhales, and magical birds that live in the hearts of their masters.

This world is enchantingly portrayed in Headley’s witty, whimsical poetry.  She plays around with language in a way that showcases her comfort with the medium.  There are whole multitudes of feeling explored in punctuation [{(((   )))}], blank spaces, and paragraphs shaped like homes and falling rain.  There are descriptions that could have been painted on.  The whole thing is suffused with a dry cheekiness that feels like Headley is letting you in on some private joke.

But there’s a dark side to the beauty.  Aza soon realizes that something is amiss.  The captain wants something from her.  The sailors won’t let her leave.  And a ghost-bird cries for freedom, while all ears but Aza’s are deaf.  On the surface world, only Jason believes that Aza is not truly lost, but his persistence may be putting him in great danger.

This is the kind of book that will leave you breathless.  Headley paces it perfectly, making you wait and then cracking the whip.  She draws you in with the wonders of Magonia’s magic, of Aza’s mystical powers, leaving you languid and satisfied.  Then, she stokes the tension with an accumulation of darker and darker mysteries that explode into a surprising climax.

I did have my complaints.  I wish we’d gotten more of a taste of Magonia’s rulers, of the relationship of Magonia and Earth, of the mysterious skinwalkers.  These things seemed too circumscribed for such important pieces of the puzzle.  But in the end, my questions just pointed to one fact: I want more of this world!  

About C.J.

I’m a font of useless knowledge and an endless source of sarcasm. Oh, and I guess I read, too.

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