My dad often gives me Orson Scott Card books for Christmas. They're usually a fun read. This one, however, was less enjoyable than others.

Granted, it was a wholehearted attempt on Card's part to write a novel with African American leads at the request of one of his black friends who was complaining about the paucity of black heroes in American fiction.

But it just felt forced. Rather than featuring well-rounded characters in a upper-middle class black community, the people in this book felt like individuals who rehearsed with monotonous regularity common complaints, concerns, and feelings that non-black Americans hear are common among their black counterparts. So, I give Card credit for trying, but I just don't think he pulled off that component of the book.

As for the story itself, it's a pretty good idea--there is a portal into a fairy world that this one boy has access to, and the main fairies end up being Puck, etc. from Shakespeare plays. But for some reason, the story didn't jive for me either. I never really got into it or cared very much about it . . . I read it too long ago to be more analytical than that.

At the start, I was not liking the weirdness. But as he created the world of the story, it became much more enjoyable. Worth reading, but not twice.

Interesting.

93/ 2023

CALLE DE MAGIA

Regreso a uno de mis autores fetiche y de forma puramente casual, porque reconozco que, cuando me enteré de su "activismo político", me revolvió el estómago y no volví a leer nada suyo a pesar de que he pasado toda mi vida acompañada de sus libros, desde que descubrí EL JUEGO DE ENDER, y ahí fue un no parar.
Resulta que hace unos meses asistí a un mercadillo solidario de libros y ahí estaba esta novela, guiñándome el ojito. ¿Cómo no me la iba a llevar a casa?
La primera sorpresa ha sido descubrir que la historia no era de ciencia ficción, su género, sino de fantasía. Y la he disfrutado como una perra. De hecho, yo creo que CUENTO DE HADAS de King podría estar inspirada en esta obra, solo que la de King suspende y la de Card aprueba con notaza.
Aunque reconozco que hubo momentos en los que pensé que la magia me iba a agotar, la oscuridad de la historia y otros recursos del autor no me han dejado ahogarme y me ha resultado una de esas novelas que recordarás para siempre con una sonrisa

A college professor picks up a derelict by the side of the road on his way home from work one day and quickly discovers that the homeless man isn’t what he appears to be–when he gets home, the professor finds his previously not-pregnant wife in the throes of delivering a baby, which the derelict collects and departs with. Nobody except the professor remembers the event afterward. Later, a teenage boy discovers the baby abandoned in a plastic bag at a local park. The child survives and is taken in by a neighborhood spinster. He’s given the name Mack Street, and as he grows up, it’s apparent that his oddness goes well beyond the circumstances of his birth. Mack Street can see other people’s dreams, and when some of those dreams begin to come true in horrific ways, Mack and his neighbors in the L.A. suburb of Baldwin Hills begin to realize that strange forces are at work in their community, and reality is a whole lot stranger than any of them expected. There’s a war going on that’s as old as time itself, and Mack Street is caught in the middle of it.

In Magic Street, Orson Scott Card has woven some difficult issues of modern American community and culture, and one of his favorite themes, the alien, messianic child, into a contemporary fairy tale that fleshes out an obscure reference in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

There will be some spoilers toward the end of this, so stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled.

Upward Mobility: Card wrestles with a tough, un-PC issue in contemporary American culture: the alienation of upwardly-mobile minorities. The good people of Baldwin Hills have escaped poverty and achieved a piece of the American Dream, despite many obstacles, but they feel uncomfortable about it, as if they’ve sold out or betrayed their fellow people of color in some fashion, losing touch with a shared culture of struggle against adversity that once defined them. He doesn’t offer any solutions other than the insight that being mistreated by society isn’t a good reason to cultivate hatred and pass that mistreatment on to others. As Dr. Seuss might say, a person’s a person, no matter how small (or what color, or how loud their street bike is at 3 am).

Street Cred: Card strives for authenticity in his depiction of Black characters, and mostly succeeds, I think, but sometimes it seems like he falls back on stereotype. C’mon, a “Yo mama’s so fat…” sparring session?

Titania is Not a “Hoochie Mama”: Authors and playwrights are continually trying to update Shakespeare, and it almost always fails. The characters feel awkward when taken out of their cultural context. Card’s concept is very creative–I liked the way he put the little fracas over the “changeling child” from Midsummer Night’s Dream into an accessible context, but in my opinion, it still didn’t have enough momentum to escape the gravity well created by putting Shakespearean characters in modern dress. Titania’s a queen, not Queen Latifah, though that’s an amusing mental image.

Some Editors Don’t Recognize Me, So I Carry the Orson Scott Card: Regardless of the quality of the writing, if a non-marquee author tried to pitch a fantasy story in which Shakespeare’s fairies interacted with the real world, I expect they’d get shot down because it’s already been done–a lot. OSC can get away with it because, well, he’s OSC. Yes, I’m whining, but it’s a complaint about the publishing world, not this book. Ah, well, it’s nice that somebody gets to take a fresh cut at a venerable trope.

If You Can’t Blind Them With Brilliance…: What caught my interest and kept me reading this story was the “What the Heck is Going On Here?” factor. Once Card gets past the initial strangeness and lets the reader into what’s happening, it’s a fairly conventional ride. Confused Messiah Kid and Sidekicks Save the World. I’ve been down this road so often I know how many telephone poles there are. The writing is masterful, but the story didn’t grip me. It was, frankly, hard for me to get too excited about or feel much sympathy for supernatural characters who were arbitrarily wanton and cruel. “The Devil made me do it” has never been a convincing defense, Puck’s charm and Oberon’s self-inflicted schizophrenia notwithstanding, and there are way too many real babies being set out with the trash these days. The image didn’t just shock, it shut me down. Card’s “All’s Well That Ends Well” finish doesn’t satisfy, either. If I were the folks in Baldwin Hills, I’d be surfing the Net for a good paranormal liability attorney, not basking in the afterglow of a rockin’ dance with the Faerie Queen. I’d have gladly left this entire Faerie court penned up in the underworld where they couldn't mess around with innocent people, who have enough problems without super-powered delinquents warping their reality. Get an eternal life, y’all.

Bottom Line: Magic Street is an entertaining, well-written story, but the central conceit of bored immortals using humans as playthings/pawns in their everlasting war wasn’t appealing to me. Explicitly drawing a parallel between Mack’s situation and the Incarnation didn’t help me, either–it’s not the same thing, not at all.

Entertaining, if a bit weird. Modern day fantasy with fairies and a kid born of mysterious circumstances.

My entire exposure to Orson Scott Card being the Ender series, I wasn't expecting an urban fantasy. I love urban fantasy, and the first quarter of this book didn't disappoint. But as the story progressed, things got bogged down in too many characters and not enough depth. There is none of the nuance and subtlety of De Lint here. After finishing this hot mess, I think a De Lint fix is just what I need. A little Maida and Zia to put a smile back on my face.

This book was good. It was a little hard to follow at times for me but overall the story is very good. Maybe a little odd at times but some of the best things are

A fantasy novel set in the present time, in a real place with no characters with strange unpronounceable names. Based vaguely on a Midsummer Night's Dream, it tells of a changeling who lives with a childless spinster and his interaction with Fairyland, Titania, the Queen of the fairies and Oberon, her husband. Not to mention the mischievous Puck! It sounds a little silly, but isn't in the least. The author draws these elements into a perfectly believable story with great characters.. The blurb on the jacket quotes the New York Times as saying that the writer has 'a model of narrative clarity'. Indeed he has.

This is my first OSC novel outside Enderverse and, for me, ended much better than it began. There was a long introduction into the Baldwin Hills neighborhood and establishing the character of Mack Street. Then a quick fast forward or two before the heart of the story really began unfolding. I really liked the vehicle of Wm. Shakespeare bringing together the two worlds - others here complain about it but that element is what really brought me into the story. The reader did a fantastic job and the Afterward by the author explains why Mr. Painfully White wrote a story about a black neighborhood.

Reminds me a lot of Neil Gaiman, but not quite as good.

Full of Puns, Metaphors, and Shakespeare references.