Magic Street (non-spoilery review)

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Jayelle
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Magic Street (non-spoilery review)

Postby Jayelle » Wed Oct 25, 2006 12:55 pm

I just finished Magic Street by OSC and to be honest, I was disappointed. For taking five years to write this novel, it seems like he didn't go back and read over it before sending it off to the publishers. He's lost his touch.

The story feels...unconnected and forced. I didn't feel connected to these characters at all, and the story shifts massively in the middle of the book, making a turn for the worse. It just didn't strike me as...realistic.
I know that it's a fantasy novel, but the people still didn't act like people, they just went along with the plot without question, like mindless extras.

"Fairys are real"
Okay!

"This guy can dream your dreams"
Okay!

It just didn't connect to how people would behave.

I was roped in at the beginning. It has a strong start and an interesting hook, but I was soon bored and by the end I had to struggle just to finish it, just to care how it finished.

2stars out of 5.
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Postby wigginboy » Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:40 pm

JL, I have to say I agree with some parts of your. It was a good book, that I enjoyed from start to finish, but the issue of the characterizations came up quite alot when my mother (also a Card fan) and I discussed the book after i read it back in July. The characters that were developed at the beginning just dropped off near the middle, as you mentioned, and were never really developed after that. As well, the plot seemed to be forced, as if pushed along by something. While I was not aware that it took Card so long to complete the book, I make the inference that it took so long simply because he couldnt think of ideas. As well, the end of the book really disappointed me, I was expecting something else, as Im sure many were, and when that was not fulfilled, I felt sad. I almost felt as though I'd wasted my money, but then I realized that there had been no money to waste as I had checked it out of the local library.

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Spoilers!

Postby Sibyl » Wed Feb 07, 2007 12:58 am

Spoilers!
:!:











I have to disagree, but probably I wasn't reading it as a plain novel. To me, from the very beginning, it seemed to be more Myth, but this time a Christological allegory-- the Black American culture only got in the way for me, but it was an interesting setting for it.

One thing that struck me very noticeably was the Christian Creedal Trinitarian nature of the Christology, and unless I'm much mistaken I don't think Mormons believe that way. Not that it was totally Creedal, but Trinitarian theology is rough enough to explain without sneaking some heresy in even for Episcopalian seminary-educated priests on Trinity Sunday.

But there's the Virgin Birth, the Finding in the Temple, the Crucifixion (look at the language when Mack is hanging from the helicopter/dragon), the Pieta, Resurrection and Ascension, rejoining together with the Father, and Salvation. Wishes are Prayers, and the way Prayer can go wrong when it isn't coupled with "Thy Will be done", and on and on. Some of it's more directly out of the Book of Revelation than even the Left Behind series with its literalism to the point of being ridiculous. I haven't placed all of it, but I'm not nearly as familiar with Mormon Theology as I am with classical Christian, and of course Allegory can't connect directly. Hart's Hope has such allegorical echoes too, especially the Virgin Birth, and some of the others, and I haven't even read all of his work yet, by a long way. But Magic Street is more closely connected to Christianity than Narnia is! I don't suppose that Oberon as God the Father is any more blasphemous than Aslan the Lion as Christ.

I'll give it as many stars as there are available, but not as a plain novel.
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