Way too much, very poorly done "white author trying to do black jargon". I simply didn't care about the characters at all, and I couldn't wait for the end.

OSC does NOT write "ethnic" characters as well as Neil Gaiman does. You're better off reading Ananzi's Boys, the sequel to American Gods. Most of the characters are black, and he gets it right. He realizes that black folks such as myself do not just rhapsodize about their blackness all the time. We don't have anything to prove. We just ARE.
Also, I do not think we needed descriptions of the main character taking a poop. Seriously, leave that shit out!
Also, you do NOT stop the story to have the main character go on and on about how he can't have sex with another character because they have to be married first. They can jump over a broom, you know!
The combination of Shakespeare, faeries and a black suburb is a nice idea, but the execution could have been better in places.

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.

Orson Scott Card weaves an unlikely fantasy tale featuring African-American protagonists and characters. It's goode enought that I've read it twice. The second time I read it revealed different aspects of the story than I'd previously remarked upon. Recommended.

Orson Scott Card is a good writer, as one can tell from his "Ender's Game" and his advice on writing. But there are times when even an expert can do ... not so well. It has happened to better authors before and it's never a pretty sight. Modern fantasy is a genre that has a niche group of writers, (I see the Gaiman fans standing up...) and I can imagine Card doing much better in future books. Just not this one. To be fair, this isn't Stephen King's "Eyes Of The Dragon" bad, but it's still not good.
I actually enjoyed the first half of book, even though it felt more like his social experiment in writing about the Black community (with fairies thrown in and stirred slowly...)
But after the exposition in the middle about what was REALLY going on, the magic sort of goes away, (hell, yes, pun intended. Yay.) and we are left with a rather bland journey all the way to the end.
I wanted to give it 3 stars, but that's injustice to much better works like Ender And Alvin.

Got about 40% through it. Couldn’t stand anymore

A child born of magic must save humans from a mad fairy

This was a great read. I love Card's writing style and the characters he created were so likeable and real. The story was a little more "out there" than I expected but I enjoyed it just the same.

The only time Card failed me was when I saw him in person. I didn't much like him from the talk he gave at an English teachers' conference, but his books never fail to take me deep into their worlds. Days after finishing Magic Street I still feel immersed in Mack Street's story.

Számomra az eddigi leggyengébb Card-írás. Vannak benne kifejezetten jó mozzanatok, de az egész valahogy katyvasz marad a végéig, nem igazán akar összeállni a sztori. A karakterek amúgy rendben lennének, de ez a Los Angeles-i környezetbe átültetett Shakespeare-i történet nem működött nálam.

Not a bad read but not as good as the Enders game series. Definitely an interesting take on stories by Shakespeare!

As with all of Card's books, this most recent of his is very well written.
It takes place in an upper-middle-class black american community. Card's afterword makes much of how he had his black friend vet it before sending it out - I think because he KNEW that he'd be taking a lot of criticism. The characters in this book don't just happen to be black, they make a Big Deal out of being black (or Card makes that deal). At times, his characterization works - but at other times I felt like saying, "Yo, you be Trying Too Hard, bro!"
Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the first half of this book. It's a riff on the classic stories of wishes gone wrong. An adopted foundling, Mack Street, grows up in a tight-knit community... but he has dreams of his neighbor's dearest wishes - dreams that begin to come true in horrific ways.
And one day he discovers he can slip sideways through a house no one else can see, and into Fairyland... he is, of course, a changeling, and is pulled into the ago-old drama involving Puck, Oberon and Titania...
However, the second half of the book becomes overtly religious. (As opposed to being a book about religious people, which is fine.) But it got extremely moralizing, and, probably because I don't agree with Card's religious views, the story and plot really just stopped working for me. Card, I felt, was trying to overlay a black-and-white duality over a story of beings who have always been amoral (and are here specified as still being amoral), and eh.... it didn't work. There is also a very weird segment where for some very vaguely explained reason, Mack has to have sex with the 'hot motorcycle hoochie mama' who is Titania. But he won't do it before getting married. rolleyes.gif So Titania says they can be married only in the eyes of God (? A fairy says this?) but not the law, so Titania Hypnotizes the preacher into doing a ceremony (dude, I don't think that counts!), but this makes sex OK! And then, even more oddly, Card makes some comment about this being like a gay marriage where partners are "married in the eyes of God but not the law." Just trying to figure out if Card has changed his stance on homosexuality and gay marriage here, or not??? Anyway, it was all pretty ridiculous.