A Far Wilder Magic by Allison Saft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
3.3 stars
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
People say alchemy is many things.
The hala is a magical beast that means different things to different religions but every year there is a hunt to kill it, for over a century the last remaining hala has avoided death. When Margaret Welty sees the white fox in the woods, she knows the hunt is coming to her village and envisions it as an opportunity to get her mother to finally stay home with her. It's been three months since her alchemist mother has returned home on her search for the hala, her mother thinks if she kills the hala and burns it, she will be able to create a philosophers stone, that will then give her the power to bring Margaret's dead brother back.
What would it mean for a Sumic kid from the Fifth Ward and a Yu’adir girl from the countryside to win? It would mean nothing, and it would mean everything. It would—at least for one night, at least in this one nowhere town—force New Albion to reconsider what its heroes look like. To acknowledge its heritage, its identity, is not and was never homogenous.
Weston Winters comes from the poorer fifth ward in the city and after his father dies, he's trying to step-up and provide for his mother and sisters. He wants to become a politician but as the child of immigrant parents, many avenues are shut to him, so he's trying to become an alchemist, as they can become politicians. However, he's been dismissed by alchemists, that will even take a boy of his religion, all over the city and his last hope is Evelyn Welty in the countryside. When her daughter is less than welcoming, he fights to change her mind as he sees this as his last hope. When she comes to him with the idea to enter the hala hunt together, he agrees as this could be the last chance for either of them to achieve their dreams.
Clouds pass over the sun the moment she meets his gaze, the gold draining from her eyes as they narrow. Like this, she looks more wolf than girl— like some magic far wilder than alchemy runs through her.
A Far Wilder Magic was a magical realism story told in third person present tense that heavily used allegory to explore religious and immigration tensions. Margaret and Weston are shunned, bullied, and disadvantaged because of their respective religions. Margaret tends to keep her head down and try not to garner the main perpetrator, the local rich boy Jamie, attention while Weston loses his temper more and wants to talk back. Margaret just wants her mother to come home and grasp some of the happy home she used to have while her brother was alive and before her father left and Weston wants to enter politics to make a difference in the world and change societal views and structure towards immigrants. They're both seventeen, why this is tagged as young adult, and their emotional struggles show that at times but any age group could pick this up and enjoy the messaging and world.
Why should we let people like Jaime say what is and isn’t for us?
The story gets told both from Margaret and Weston's point-of-view but the third person present tense takes a little getting used to. It gives it an introspective and daydreaming quality that fits the messaging and fantasy side of the story but the icing of style the author takes with descriptions, The next two days pass like honey drizzled from the tip of a spoon.,that can fit in fantasy, bogged me down in its continual usage as the momentum of the story dragged in the second half. The synopsis made me think that the hala hunt was going to play a bigger part in the story but while it's the catalyst to get Margaret and Weston together, the event doesn't actually happen until the very back-end of the book, 90%. I thought Margaret and Weston swirled around with their thoughts and feelings repetitively too many times, their angst is understandable but around the 60% mark, I needed the pace to pick-up and the hala hunt to start.
Girls like her don’t get to dream. Girls like her get to survive. Most days, that’s enough. Today, she doesn’t think it is.
The surrounding characters and world, the setting seems to be a magical realism 1920-ish, added to the richness of the messaging and world. There were characters that young adults could easily identify, the bully, the ally, the enabler, and they came with shades of gray to make them, at times empathetic but also challenging. Weston's family, his mother and sisters, helped to provide some of the heart of the story and also worked as a mirror for Margaret to hold up to her own relationship with her mother; what unconditional love and trust is really about. I thought, even though she is only seventeen, Margaret held onto the idea that giving her mother the hala would make her show her love and stay with her, for a little too long, another kind of dragged out thread that hurt the pace in the second half for me.
All is One and One is All. At their core, they are all the same, all of them trying to survive.
Margaret and Weston's romance was a slow burn with a sweet payoff and I thought their future, with the best coonhound Trouble, was believable. There were some pacing problems for me in the second half and while the overly descriptive style fit the fantasy vibes, it started to feed into the bogged down feel. The messaging with religious and immigration intolerance, along with power not being corrupt but who is wielding it, was ingrained into the story with thought and the character struggles with unconditional love and trust infused the emotion. The hala brought a sprinkling of horror/suspense chills, the world setting provided magical realism and fantasy, and Margaret and Weston gave us the angst and love.
