Magic in the Blood
Book Three of the Wild Side Trilogy
A girl’s relationships and mastery of her emotions help her through an important quest in the coming-of-age novel Magic in the Blood.
Filled with elemental magic, Michael Foster’s enchanting fantasy novel Magic in the Blood is about a teenager with newfound magical powers.
Alicia is the Burning Girl, whose power destroyed the barriers between the world of magic and humans. As the blending of worlds creates more strange creatures and occurrences, Alicia joins her father, Richard, on a quest to try to fix the rift. She makes helpful friends along the way, though one discovery threatens to overwhelm her and keep her from saving both worlds.
About trust, family, friendship, independence, bravery, and emotions including grief, anger, and love, this is a story that’s most concerned with relationships within both worlds. Growing danger and instances of self-discovery also advance its plot. There are attacks on Alicia’s life; she learns that her fire magic can do more than spark on her fingertips.
Alicia is a complex heroine who contends with external and internal challenges in a mature manner. Secondary characters are there to assist: Her cougar, Tawny, is her best friend, prompting her to heroic acts. And Alicia’s emotions are linked to her use of magic, which is effectively a physical symptom of what she feels. In time, she faces a nonhuman villain, Gran’Tree, whose speech patterns are drawn out and chilling, as with “Iii aaam not theee.” Gran’Tree’s strength grows even as Alicia struggles to accept who she is and where she came from. How she handles these challenges proves pivotal to her growth—and to the outcome of the book’s last battle.
Though the book’s opening is burdened by lengthy exposition to catch series newcomers up on the events of previous volumes, the story soon hits its stride. Its chapters are short, swift, and filled with vivid details that evoke the senses, such as mentions of the “briny smell of the beach” and of silence being broken by a faint sound, like “the string section of an orchestra just starting to warm up before a performance” to form “a melody, pure and clean as a mountain stream.” However, the prose is also heavy with adverbs at times, leading to redundancies. Still, the book works toward an exciting conclusion, and engaging illustrations complement the story throughout.
Hope exists and love is powerful in Magic in the Blood, an immersive coming-of-age fantasy novel in which a teenager on a consequential quest evokes sympathy, appreciation, and gratitude.
Reviewed by
Shari Marshall
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
