Shadows

by Robin McKinley

Shadows is a compelling and inventive novel set in a world where science and magic are at odds, by Robin McKinley, the Newbery-winning author of The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword, as well as the classic titles Beauty, Chalice, Spindle's End, Pegasus and Sunshine

Maggie knows something's off about Val, her mom's new husband. Val is from Oldworld, where they still use magic, and he won't have any tech in his office-shed behind the house. But-more importantly-what are the huge, horrible, jagged, jumpy shadows following him around? Magic is illegal in Newworld, which is all about science. The magic-carrying gene was disabled two generations ago, back when Maggie's great-grandmother was a notable magician. But that was a long time ago.

Then Maggie meets Casimir, the most beautiful boy she has ever seen. He's from Oldworld too-and he's heard of Maggie's stepfather, and has a guess about Val's shadows. Maggie doesn't want to know . . . until earth-shattering events force her to depend on Val and his shadows. And perhaps on her own heritage.

In this dangerously unstable world, neither science nor magic has the necessary answers, but a truce between them is impossible. And although the two are supposed to be incompatible, Maggie's discovering the world will need both to survive.

About the author:
Robin McKinley has won many awards, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine.

She lives in Hampshire, England with her husband, author Peter Dickinson

Check out her blog at robinmckinleysblog.com.

• ISBN10: 0141338245
• ISBN13: 9780141338248
• Publish Date: 2 January 2014 (first published 26 September 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Puffin
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[nannah]

Oh, boy. DNF @ 13%.
I hate not finishing books, especially when I’ve barely scratched the surface, but this one was just … so, so bad.

So far, in what I read, Maggie is an incredibly judgmental person who takes a huge disliking to her new stepfather, Val, and the strange, moving and wiggling shadows he carries around with him. She and her family live in Newworld, a world built on science that seems to have … done away with all magic from the Oldworld. I’m sure the book would expand on that (so far it involves a ton of eugenics that made me squirm), but I didn’t get that far.

Doesn’t sound that bad, right? But here’s what made me stop: the entire prose is littered with Japanese words. Maggie’s not Japanese … and the author, Robin McKinley is white. It’s not every once in a while, either, it’s “getting a D on your algebra homework for the second time and seeing the akuma of summer school looming at you. / Bugsuck. Iya. Iya na creepo.”

Supposedly the reason why there’s Japanese words throughout the entire book (I flipped through it; it’s there. It’s there till the end) is because Maggie and her best friend decided to make fun of their half-Japanese friend by appropriating words in Japanese. And now they just use Japanese words and phrases in their speech and thoughts. All the time. Someone please explain to me why he’s still friends with them?

I just … could not bear reading a whole novel about a (white? probably?) girl saying ”Baka” every couple pages. I just couldn’t.

Plus this girl keeps judging her stepdad for being an immigrant, and multiple times wishes he would just be “deported back to Orzi-whatsit” (a fictional country in the “Slavic Commonwealth”). She makes fun of his accent too, which is also a plus (/s).

I just couldn’t stand the voice, which is pretty much the heart of a novel. So I had to pass.

[ladygrey]

I liked that this was a really unique world of magic. Eventually it kind of felt like a very sort of accurate version of what the world would look like if our history had contained magic and this is what it had become. But it also felt like the world was just opening up and becoming more interesting at the end.

It some ways a lot of things were every familiar because I've read a lot of [author:Robin McKinley] and so magic will give you headaches and there will be lots of animals that help and also either a dog or a horse that's the heroine's best friend. And the heroine will refuse to accept that she's special and possibly even that she's magical. But this story was much less abstract than some of her other climaxes (like [book:Spindle's End] and [book:Sunshine]) and there was good, solid resolution after the big battle so it ended well.

I think the thing I missed the most was that I didn't love the characters. I didn't dislike them and they all changed in interesting ways. But I didn't love them so I was never really pulled into the story so much that I had to keep reading. And also the romance. I think it's hard, sometimes, to be true to real life in a book. In real life it makes perfect sense that you'd want to be with the person you'd been friends with for years once you see them in that new light instead of the new shiny person you don't have that history with. But the reader doesn't have the life history of the characters, we've only got the book history of the past 150 pages. And it's Robin McKinley so if course the heroine thinks the new shiny guy only wants to be with her because he thinks she's special - not because he actually sees her and likes her. I thought she was just being annoying for an entire chapter. It wasn't until the end I realized she was actually right. And all the memories we were given didn't endear me to the love interest and didn't generate any affection in me. I understood the appeal to the new shiny guy and then he was out without a second thought and I never got the appeal of his replacement as a reader, even though I could see why the character would make that choice. If that makes sense. Also a couple of the characters are written with their sort of foreign accents so the grammar is messed up which is also authentic, but really just awkward and uncomfortable to read.

I think I would have liked to have seen the other side of this story - the part that started in the last bit with all the different magic workers and what other characters were doing with their magic.