Aza Ray Boyle is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak—to live. So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of her medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name.
Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who's always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. Aza is lost to our world—and found, by another. Magonia.
Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power—but as she navigates her new life, she discovers that war between Magonia and Earth is coming. In Aza's hands lies fate of the whole of humanity—including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?
I, too, suffer from buying a book just because it has a pretty cover. Granted, I read this book in April-ish of 2015, so I was still 21. This review is completely by memory, but it is so memorable in all the wrong ways. I thought the premise sounded interesting, but once I finally cracked it open, I realized the error of my judgement. This book was so dumb, scattered, and generally not interesting. The gif of the Nostalgia Critic does not lie (I'm using his gifs because I'm basing this review on memory). It felt like I was losing brain cells left, right, and centre while reading this book. The characters were really dumb and suffered from Special Snowflake Syndrome. They were too quirky and zany, past the point of believability. I know the author was trying to aim for likability and relatability, but it was as if the characters were trying too hard to be quirky and off-centre. It didn't work naturally like it did in a book like The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. They were stupid, unlikable and boring. The only non-unlikable character was Jason. But he wasn't likeable either. If anything, I was indifferent to him. Everyone else was really dumb and I couldn't picture them existing in real life.
The plot, if I can even call it that, was non-existent. There was no plot. Nothing exciting happened. Non-exciting things just happened, or rather, we heard about the non-exciting things happening by our rambling narrator. There was a lot of info-dumping simultaneous with a character saying something and not explaining it. CHOOSE ONE OR THE OTHER. The main character Aza just describes her day with the ridiculous goings-on that happen to her on the sky-boat with the bird-people (yes, that's actually a thing that exists and is a large part of the "plot"). I think what pissed me off so much is the fact that this book had so much potential and it just did not follow through on that potential. There's suspension of disbelief, and then there's just whatever the hell was going on in this book. She's dying because she's a bird lady who should be living on a floating ship in the sky. Right. OK, then. Because that's logical, No going into more detail? Oh - All right, fine. It would have worked beautifully if it was done correctly or with a tiny bit of explaining without info-dumping. Time for more Nostalgia Critic to set the record straight:
I'm not criticizing the premise of the book at all. Rather the execution of the premise. The writing style was also everywhere, which was another great cause of confusion. Most of the time, Ms. Headley's actual writing voice was good. But it would have been so much better if it stuck to one form of writing style. Sometimes it was informative, sometimes it was stream of consciousness, sometimes it was a combination. Was she trying to go for a form of poetics nouveau? JUST. CHOOSE. ONE. STYLE.
After all was said and done, I was surprised I finished it. There were so many times I wanted to dump it in my DNF pile. I think subconsciously, I wanted the damn book to be finished and over. I'm giving Magonia 1/5, do not recommend.
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