Magonia

Author: Maria Dahvana Headley

Genre: New Adult, Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction.

Editorial: HarperCollins

Year: 2015

Ranking: 3/5

  

Synopsis

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?

The Author

Maria Dahvana Headley is the author of the upcoming young adult sky ship novel MAGONIA from HarperCollins, the dark fantasy/alt-history novel QUEEN OF KINGS, the internationally bestselling memoir THE YEAR OF YES, and THE END OF THE SENTENCE, a novella co-written with Kat Howard, from Subterranean. With Neil Gaiman, she is the New York Times-bestselling co-editor of the monster anthology UNNATURAL CREATURES, benefitting 826DC. 

She grew up in rural Idaho on a sled-dog ranch, spent part of her 20's as a pirate negotiator and ship marketer in the maritime industry, and now lives in Brooklyn in an apartment shared with a seven-foot-long stuffed crocodile. 

Personal Experience with This Book

I began this book with very high expectations. Everyone in Booktube was crazy about it. Everyone said it was a great book and the story was unique and many other things that put the book in a good position. The reviews I have read about the book also pointed out that I was surely going to like this and the synopsis looked so unique that I decided to read it.

I think that my expectations for the book made me not to enjoy it as much as others. The story is unique; there is no doubt of that. I think the author created a world with a spectacular magic and I think it could have been an epic book. However, it was not. The world and story are interesting but there comes a time when it becomes too flat and that interest from the beginning disappears.

As you begin to read, you meet all these issues and there are many questions you want  the author to resolved. However once the author answer all these questions; Why Aza is always sick? Where she comes from? That is Magonia? What is the role of Jason in? And many more, one loses interest in the story and the characters.

I did not feel anything for Aza. Even pity or sorrow when she was sick, the story does not allows you to look at Aza that way. In addition, it does not give you that feeling of wanting her to succeed. With Jason, on the other hand, I connected a lot with his chapters at the beginning of the story and I liked reading then even more than Aza’s parts. But, there comes a time when Jason disappears from the story and countless Aza chapters starts, I was sincerely bored a little. And, because of the above, I honestly did not care if Aza ended up with Jason or not. If one day the two of them could be together or not I really did not care.

Neither matter to me what happened to the war between Magonia and Earth. I do not have any questions or want to know about the magical world that think the author. And this is an important point because when you read the synopsis the world seems to be one of the things that attracted the most attention of this story. How not to create an interest in the reader to know more about it?

The reason I gave the book a 3 and not a lower rating is Aza’s Family. I was moved a lot. They were the only characters that came to my heart in this book and I want to see what will happen to them. That is why I will give an opportunity to the second book of this duology.

I do not know about you but to me this particular book was not the amazing thing I thought it was going to be. I liked the premise and can say that until the first half everything was normal. However, it came a time when I read because I felt I had to finish it and not for wanting to read it. Does anyone has read or plan to read Magonia? If so, please tell me what you think.