Direct Quote from dust jacket: “A novel that uses realism and fantasy to delight, challenge, and satisfy on the most profound levels.” Liars.This should have been a good book. Written by Orson Scott Card, a tried and true literature giant, combining the world of fairy and Midsummer Night’s Dream with urban realism, and telling the classic story of the outsider who rises up to save everyone, it had so much going for it. And for the first half of the book, it held up to its promise. Watching young Mack Street grow up and learn about his powers and who he really is was thoroughly enjoyable. Mack is a great protagonist, likable and surrounded by a colorful cast of characters that add a great sense of depth and realism to the world. Plus, like I said, this is a familiar story being told. Fans of fantasy and literature alike will recognize the classic tale of the orphan/peasant/nobody learning they’re special, having to fight through hardship, and eventually coming out and saving everyone. It’s a classic tale, but Card is a good enough author that he should make it interesting. Hell, he did it in Enders Game, he should be able to do it here. Except he didn’t. So what happened?Exposition. Oh god, so much exposition. For some reason, half way though the book, when the inciting incident happens and things are supposed to get really interesting, Card decides to take a step back and make sure that we all know what’s all going on here. In fact, he decides to make sure that everyone in the book knows what’s going on as well. And for some reason, he does this by having the same basic conversation over and over again, with different characters involved in different places. He even introduces a brand new character that just happens to have an interest in mythological folklore just so the characters can sit down and talk about what needs to be done, and then never really mentions him again. All surprise and suspense was removed, all forward motion halted as the characters sit around having conversations about what they will be doing soon. Even potential plot twists are ruined as the characters involved are so self aware that they tell you what’s going to happen before you even have a chance to guess or wonder. It was like watching a magician that tells you how the trick is done before he even does it. It still might be fun to watch, but all the wonder, all the magic is gone. More frustrating because it started so well, I feel that Card unfortunately squandered an opportunity here. I wanted to like it; I did. But I didn’t. I really didn’t.Bottom line: Magic Street is a dead end. Turn around and go back home.
Until this book, I was only familiar with Orson Scott Card through his science fiction, and a couple of articles. This is a modern fantasy set in a well-to-do black neighborhood of LA (Baldwin Hills). Some of the main characters, however, are taken directly from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."It's an interesting attempt at a modern fantasy. It does a pretty good job of blending a modern setting with historical, fantastic characters.It took me a little while to get into the book. In the beginning, a lot of the dialogue felt artificial. At first, I thought that maybe I simply wasn't familiar enough with young African-American culture in LA. But then I thought that maybe an author who grew up in Mesa, AZ and Orem, UT wasn't familiar enough with young African-American culture in LA. Eventually, I realized that the artificial-sounding dialogue was probably intentional. The characters in this book weren't young black kids living in the 'hood. They were young black kids living in a nice neighborhood, who thought they were supposed to act like they were from the 'hood, because that's what they saw on TV. Unfortunately, it wasn't apparent that's what was going on at first.The only other problem I had with this book was Yolanda White riding a Harley. A young, sexy woman who rides a motorcycle because "it's the closest I can get to flying" does not ride a Harley. When he described a sexy woman clad in black leather and a black helmet with a tinted visor sitting atop a motorcycle, I did not picture a Harley-Davidson. I'm thinking of "Dark Angel" or the first episode of "Dollhouse." She should have been on a Ninja, a Gixxer, a Ducati, or something along those lines. Oh well, it's a minor thing.All in all, a generally enjoyable and interesting book.
What do You think about Magic Street (2006)?
Ok, this was as close to taking drugs as I have ever come to. Yeah . . . it was psychodelic. Orson does his magic again by taking you into the lives of several black teenagers in a small cultisac that has some interesting secrets. Have you ever run into the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth, she tries to tempt you, but you somehow unbelieveably have the power to resist her temptation. This is what happens to the main character in this book and he not only resists her, but slowly peels back all of the layers of magic surrounding the woman and the world in which she came from. Shakespeare on Heroine. Amazing.I give it 5/5 because it always keeps you on the edge of your seat reading more and more to finally realize that what you are readiing, takes you back to the beginning of where it all started.Cheers!
—Christian
Meh. I'm disappointed in this book. I had a hard time moving past the "white author depicting a black world" facet of this book, and so no matter how authentic Orson Scott Card managed to be (and how would I know?), that kept me from really settling in and enjoying the book. I do appreciate that authors try to explore experiences and viewpoints other than their own - if they didn't, there wouldn't be much fiction, would there? But when it comes to taking on a different race or gender, it is very rare that an author is able to make me forget that this isn't his or her own world, and Card didn't manage it here. (If I hadn't known that he is white, I might have felt differently, but he certainly wasn't able to make me forget that.)Aside from that, the fantasy portions were haphazard: neither smoothly executed nor well explained. There were a few things that caught my attention, such as the roles of conscience and identity and the idea of people's deepest wishes coming true in the worst possible ways - which was the most intriguing part of the book - but they were not enough to bring the book together in a cohesive whole.
—Alison
Well, this was a very unusual reading experience.Typically, if my interest isn't caught by about 50 pages into a book, I just stop. With this particular book I stuck in until around page 100 because my wife told me she enjoyed it before I decided that I was done with it. It was extremely weird and I didn't particularly care for the characters that had thus been presented.When I went home (I had been reading on my lunch break) I told my wife that the book was just too strange for me (which is saying something, considering I'm three-quarters of a book away from having read everything by Stephen King). She assured me that she felt the same way, but that the book starts to make a lot more sense just a little bit further in.Thankfully, she was right.So, having read all of Magic Street, I can say that this certainly isn't OSC's best writing, nor is it his worst (see my review of Ruins). It was a very bizarre book that got better as it went. After I got past the [spoiler] stuff about the immaculate conception and one hour pregnancy of Mack[/spoiler] I got to enjoy the character of Mack and got to see more of the internal logic of the magic of the world. I very much enjoyed the imposition of ideas from A Midsummer Night's Dream into modern LA, and I felt that the characters became more round and interesting as the story progressed. I'd say this is a good piece for people who enjoy reading something unique, or enjoy a fun urban fantasy story, but not really for most others. This is certainly a far cry from more popular OSC stuff like the stories set in the Enderverse.
—Nathaniel Darkish
