Patricia is an outcast middle schooler, who one day runs into the woods away from her sister, where a bird tells her that she's a witch. Lawrence is an outcast middle schooler, who would rather program AIs and build robots than be outdoorsy like his parents want. To pacify them, he makes friends with Patricia, who spins stories for his parents about all the time they supposedly spend outside. The more outcast they become, the more their reputations bring each other down, and they're repeatedly tempted to abandon each other, finally splitting after Patricia saves Lawrence from military school and runs away to magic school. They reunite as adults, with the world on the brink of collapse, both with ideas of how to save the world. But their ideas conflict with each other and bring about a war between science and magic.
I really like the first third of this book where they're in middle school, and I had trouble with the last two thirds. After thinking about it, there are two reasons for this.
First, when they're children, Patricia's magical achievments and Lawrence's technological achievements look like coping mechanisms, like stories they're telling themselves that aren't based in reality because their realities suck. Lawrence builds a "two second time machine" that moves the traveler two seconds into the future--just far enough to skip over a punch. Now, in the world of the novel as we see it, it seems unrealistic that time machines exist, that a kid can build one, that everyone doesn't have one, and that they're being used for relatively trivial things, all of which points to this not being real. And then there's the deniability aspect: two seconds is such a short amount of time that it could be that Lawrence is just cringing through those two seconds and playing a game where he convinces himself that he didn't experience them. He could convince himself that this game is real, as kids are prone to do.
Then for Patricia, there's a tonal shift the moment magic comes into the picture, as if she's flipped a switch in her mind and now we're in the land of make believe.
"I found a wounded bird," Patricia said. "It can't fly, its wing is ruined."There's also the extremes with which the bullies in her life are presented. Her parents' dialogue doesn't sound like adults speaking, but does sound like a pre-teen relaying a conversation with her horrible parents.
"I bet I can make it fly," Roberta said, and Patricia knew she was talking about her rocket launcher. "Bring it here. I'll make it fly real good."
"No!" Patricia's eyes flooded and she felt short of breath. "You can't! You can't!" And then she was running, careening, with the red bucket in one hand. She could hear her sister behind her, smashing branches. She ran faster, back to the house.
...
Patricia paused in a small clearing of maples near the back door. "It's okay," she told the bird. "I'll take you home. There's an old birdcage in the attic. I know where to find it. It's a nice cage, it has a perch and a swing. I'll put you in there, I'll tell my parents. If anything happens to you, I will hold my breath until I faint. I'll keep you safe. I promise."
"No," the bird said. "Please! Don't lock me up. I would prefer you just kill me now."
"But," Patricia said, more startled that the bird was refusing her protection than that he was speaking to her. "I can keep you safe. I can bring you bugs or seeds or whatever."
"What Roderick is saying is that we spent a lot of money to send you to a school with uniforms and discipline and a curriculum that creates winners," Patricia's mom hissed, her jaw and penciled eyebrows looking sharper than usual. "Are you determined to blow this last chance? If you want to be garbage, just let us know, and you can go back to the woods. Just never come back to this house. You can go live in the woods forever. We could save a large sum of money."We're pretty clearly in Patricia's mind, which makes the reliability of the story questionable. So when the guidance councilor has an elaborate backstory about being an undercover assassain sent to kill Patricia and Lawrence, and failing that at least to turn them against each other, it's reasonable to think, "Oh, this kid does not like that guidance councilor."
It's charming and whimsical and heartbreaking, and I really liked how it was clearly from a kid's point of view without using childish syntax or vocabulary.
But the we jump to when they're adults, and other characters are witches and other characters have two second time machines, corroborating that what I thought was escapism was actually happening. You could say that this is an interesting play on my expectations, or that it says something about believing children, but I really liked my expectations, damn it! Showing that I was wrong to think what I thought wasn't delightfully surprising, but rather disappointing.
Secondly, when they're adults, the background of the world falling apart comes into play. Global warming and climate change are going to make the earth uninhabitable, and Lawrence is trying to invent technology to evacuate. The apocalypse is a kind of low rumble in the background, a kind of dark cloud over everything, which makes it oppressive but also means it stays low key for most of the book. The pivot point comes when there's a super-storm that floods DC and New York, displacing people in a huge evacuation. Not really what I needed to read this weekend. So there was a combination at work where I was simultaneously thinking "a hurricane isn't going to destroy civilization. You need like three hurricanes to destroy civilization," and "Oh God, it's happening." Which made it an unfun read.
But I did really like the first third, and I probably would have liked the last 2/3 if I hadn't just read the first third and I hadn't read it during hurricane season.
***
Next week: Their Fractured Light, the final installment of the YA sci-fi Starbound series by Amie Kaufman and
Meagan Spooner
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