taken from Goodreads:
"Eff was born a thirteenth child. Her twin brother, Lan, is the seventh
son of a seventh son. This means he's supposed to possess amazing
talent -- and she's supposed to bring only bad things to her family and
her town. Undeterred, her family moves to the frontier, where her
father will be a professor of magic at a school perilously close to the
magical divide that separates settlers from the beasts of the wild.
With wit and wonder, Patricia Wrede creates an alternate history of westward expansion that will delight fans of both J. K. Rowling and Laura Ingalls Wilder."
Wrede is another of my favorite YA fantasy fans; her Cecelia and Sorcery novels, written with Caroline Stevermeyer, are a perfect blend of magic and manners, and her Enchanted Forest series introduced me to one of the few princesses I've enjoyed reading about.
Wrede's strengths lie in her ability to create extensive, detailed, and highly believable alternate worlds and unique characters that are interesting and entertaining. This novel takes an alternate look at frontier America; she re-visions the life of settlers in a world where magic is still present and very necessary (unless you are a Rationalist, and then you see things from a different point of view).
There's been a lot of talk, apparently, about the fact that in her revisioning of the Wild West, Wrede ignored the Native Americans and has therefore written a novel that is racist in this omission. To be honest, that thought never occurred to me. (I assumed that this would be addressed in further volumes; apparently it won't be, but that's not going to stop me from enjoying this novel or the future volumes in the series.) I was too caught up in the story, although it did take me a little bit to really get into it.
As I mentioned before, the world-building is incredible -- detailed and believable. The key, I think, is to keep things just close enough to the "real world" that the changing of little details doesn't require a huge suspension of belief. Instead, you're caught up in the story (and in trying to figure out/match up the substitutions).
Where I found things to be more slow-going was in the area of character development. Most of the characters were fine, but Eff, the main character, just didn't cut it for me. I thought she was a little flat, and honestly, she just didn't make me care about her, either positivitely or negatively. She was a very passive character with a very passive voice and a detached perspective, and it was this distance that put me off her. As the novel progresses, she finally begins to perk up, but I just wish that she hadn't been so "blah" through the book.
There are a lot of great ideas at work here, and seeing both Eff and Lan work to understand the expectations that come with their birth order, and to see how they and their parents handle these pressures is a really interesting look at expectations and the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many of the supporting characters are wonderfully developed, and there's a great mix of emotions that they bring up.
I'm looking foward to seeing what Wrede has in store for book 2, as this one was definitely an entertaining read.
