Justina Ireland's Rust in the Root
Normally I’m into Ireland's books, but this one did not work for me. Really interesting concepts here, but it’s slow, very exposition-heavy, and kind of predictable. I also wished the secondary characters had way more character development. Anyway, it's another historical fantasy, set in the 1930s in a world with magic (so slightly different version of history), but it’s complicated and way too much to type. Our (black teenage girl) protagonist wants to be a magical baker but takes a government job to get a license to do magic (bc the system is racist, they deal with a lot of racism and sexism in this book), so soon she’s off on a dangerous mission with her new mentor. (Things get grim.) Each chapter ends with a photograph and a blurb bc the protagonist has a camera for some reason, a device I found distracting, especially as the story got more tense, like are you seriously taking out a camera right now?? The end is interesting in some ways and formulaic in some other ways—I’d guess a sequel is forthcoming. This book has some important and relevant things to say about racism/race relations, but I didn’t especially enjoy reading it. B.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released on September 20th.
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