(no subject)

[skygiants]

I've seen various people talking recently about Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey's new book; meanwhile, because I am not particularly fast on the New Book Draw, I have just finished her Magic for Liars, which came out last year.

This book has a truly fantastic pitch: a magic school professor has turned up dead ... and a HARD-BOILED PI has been called in to solve the case! The genre collision is pretty delightful and the book's at its most enjoyable when it leans into the feel of Veronica Mars-with-magic, with our world-weary detective requisitioning the library of whispering texts in order to interview self-important magic school students. I especially enjoyed Dylan-who's-convinced-he's-the-Chosen-One and how extremely long-suffering everybody else is about it, as well as all the petty details of how terrible teens use their magic to continue being thoroughly recognizable terrible teens.

That said, the sharp-edged black-humor aspect of noir is actually less present in the narrative voice than I would have expected given the genre and premise, though Gailey is all in on that other noir tentpole, 'self-sabotaging protagonist.' Our Heroine Ivy, thoroughly mundane, has been estranged from her magical twin sister Tabitha -- a teacher at the school where the murder happened -- for at least a decade over issues related to a.) deep-rooted insecurity and b.) their mother's death from cancer that Ivy thinks magic should have fixed (an understandably common magic-world plot point, I believe it pops up in The Magicians as well). The book is mostly about Ivy grappling with this in variously unhealthy ways, as noir detectives tend to do, in between doggedly tracing dots and lines on her murder wall.

...that said, it's not as dark as I might have expected either! Ivy's first-person narration drops a lot of foreshadowing hints, which led me to expect a really spectacular explosion at the end, but honestly despite a certain degree of magic body horror (including a fairly graphic discussion of magic abortion) things could have been much worse.

Comments

[snickfic]

Ivy's first-person narration drops a lot of foreshadowing hints, which led me to expect a really spectacular explosion at the end

ME TOO. I found it a fairly anxious read, actually, for exactly that reason, but I'm glad I stuck it out, because as you say, it wasn't nearly as dark as I kept expecting it to be.

[skygiants]

I was worried the whole book that the nice teacher love interest was going to turn out to be some sort of homme fatale; I was very glad he turned out to be genuinely sweet!

[sovay]

Ivy's first-person narration drops a lot of foreshadowing hints, which led me to expect a really spectacular explosion at the end, but honestly despite a certain degree of magic body horror things could have been much worse.

Is that good?

[skygiants]

tbh I'm conflicted on it! I like hopeful endings but I did kind of want the book to lean a little harder into Being Noir, and I think the foreshadowing perhaps ought to be toned down if we're not going to go there.

[sovay]

I like hopeful endings but I did kind of want the book to lean a little harder into Being Noir, and I think the foreshadowing perhaps ought to be toned down if we're not going to go there.

I'm fine with noir with optimistic (or even happy) endings, but I agree that foreshadowing that comes to nothing is not good foreshadowing.

[kore]

I don't think I liked that one as much as Ninth House, which I read around the same time, but it was v enjoyable! I would definitely read a sequel.

[skygiants]

This comment was well timed as I am reading Ninth House (and enjoying it quite a lot) at this very moment!

[kore]

I really want a sequel to Ninth House!....I think she's busy developing it as a TV series tho, sigh.

I liked this interview with her a lot (no spoilers in it) https://www.npr.org/2019/10/06/767636941/leigh-bardugo-on-ninth-house

[skygiants]

Thanks for the link, that's so interesting! I've been thinking she writes about Yale in a very lived-in way but I hadn't realized she was directly part of a secret society herself.

[jothra]

This sounds like my jam. Maybe I'll get it at the library!

[skygiants]

You should, and then let me know what you think of it!

[copperfyre]

Coincidentally I just finished this book last week! I liked the genre collision more than I liked the actual mystery resolution, but I really enjoyed the world building and all the little details of the school (particularly, as you say, all the teenagers being very teenage!).

[skygiants]

The unwashable graffiti! All the classes figuring out their own new ways to send magic notes! It all felt ordinary-plausible-human in a way that I really enjoy magic to be.

[sperrywink]

Thanks for the review! Looks intriguing!

[skygiants]

Hope you enjoy if you read it!

[kalloway]

as well as all the petty details of how terrible teens use their magic to continue being thoroughly recognizable terrible teens

Probably my favourite part, to be honest, along with Ivy and Tabitha slowly mending their relationship a bit. Possibly, aside from Dylan, the "school nurse" was the one who stole the show whenever she appeared.

[skygiants]

I expected there to be so much more about her than we got, tbh! (Also about the woman who hired Ivy to begin with -- I kept thinking she was going to be some kind of lynchpin of the case but then she pretty much faded into the background once they got to the school.)