Magonia

Aza Ray has been drowning for her entire life, afflicted with an incurable disease that baffles her doctors. Therese Plummer's emotional narration, drawing forth both Aza's world-weary realism and her snarky attitude, will elicit a strong emotional response from listeners. However, it's Michael Crouch's embodiment of Aza's neurotic best friend, Jason, that steals the show when Aza dies just before her sixteenth birthday. When Aza awakens in a new body, in a new strange world, the alternating chapters from Jason's perspective ground the story, allowing listeners to slowly adjust to the alien world-building elements. As Aza struggles to understand her new identity and learns to harness her new abilities, fantasy fans will be fascinated with the inventive Magonian world. J.M. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 2, 2015
Terminally ill from infancy, Aza is willing to accept that she’s dead. There’s a container of ashes to prove it. It’s on Earth, along with Jason—the boy who she’s long loved and who loves her in return—and every other familiar touchstone of her brief, angry existence. Yet Aza is very much alive on the massive Magonian airship Amina Pennarum, with a piratical captain, who declares herself Aza’s true mother, and a crew of jays, robins, owls—and one screaming ghost. Headley, who co-edited Unnatural Creatures with Neil Gaiman, riffs like an improv comic through the factoids of a Google age, giving her characters retentive memories and lightning search skills. Like the best improv, the first-person narration is funny, furious, and vulnerable. The haunting conclusion leaves many issues unresolved, but the ferocious, intelligent power of Aza and Jason’s bond is completely affirmed. Sweeping, strange, and built around a richly imagined world of chimerical bird-men and airships, the novel is ideal for fans of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke & Bone and its sequels. Ages 13–up. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Gernert Company.

February 15, 2015
A girl with a rare fatal disease discovers a magical secret about herself. Aza Ray Boyle, nearly 16, is sentenced to death by a breathing disorder medical science calls Azaray syndrome (though Aza herself thinks it should be called "Clive" or maybe "the Jackass"). Somehow she keeps surviving: hating the hospital, snarking at her teachers, loving her batty family, and completely relying on her anti-social best friend, Jason. When the worst happens, Aza's shocked at how unprepared she really is. She's even less prepared to wake up on an airship, surrounded by blue-skinned sailors and giant bird people who call her Aza Ray Quel. Aza, it seems, is the lost savior of the sky people of Magonia, stolen away and hidden on land. Politicking and conspiracies confuse Aza (and set up a sequel). She really ought to relish being special as she masters her newfound powers of singing and working with a bird familiar (shaky worldbuilding leaves the magical structure somewhat hand-wavy). The painful, sarcastic beauty of Aza's interactions down below in the everyday world begs comparisons to John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (2012), yet passive savior Aza of Magonia is a pale shadow of her nonmagical self. Striking an uneven balance between gorgeous realism and banal fantasy, this requires readers tolerant of books with split personalities. (Fantasy. 13-15)

April 1, 2015

Gr 8 Up-Almost 16-year-old Aza Ray has a body that just does not want to keep her alive. The doctors are puzzled. Her heart is not in the right place, and her lungs don't seem to be able to breathe. She fights to survive with the help of her parents and best friend (and potential romantic interest) Jason. Then strange things begin to happen as Aza Ray hears the sounds of ships' horns and bird calls, which nobody else can hear. On the afternoon of her 16th birthday, she has the most serious seizure to date, and while she is in the ambulance on the way to the hospital again, something strange happens. Aza dies. Except that she doesn't die. In a bizarre clap of thunder and lightning, she is torn away from the human world and lifted to the skies, where sailing ships and incredible strange flying whales and bird-people dwell. Aza discovers that she is not human and that her lungs and heart work perfectly high in the air, in the world of Magonia. She is the daughter of a powerful captain and she learns that there is some undefined destiny that she must fulfill to save Magonia. The story continues as the heroine learns of her new world and Jason uses his prodigious Internet and mathematical talents to discover whether or not Aza is really dead. The book races to an epic confrontation that will leave readers thrilled, though confused, as the action continues. VERDICT Romance, danger, and world-building combine to make a (mostly) satisfying read.-Denise Schmidt, San Francisco Public Library

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 Aza Ray Boyle is sick with an incurable illness so rare that it's named after her. When she sees a flying ship outside her window and claims to hear someone calling her name just before her sixteenth birthday, everyone chalks it up to another hallucination. Everyone except her best friend, Jason, who tells Aza of legends of people from the sky and a place known as Magonia. When a tragedy strikes, Aza finds herself on just such a preposterous thing: a flying ship. In Magonia, she is no longer weak and can breathe easily. Furthermore, she is told she has the power to save Magonia and help supply the citizens with crops so they don't have to steal food from earth. As Aza uncovers more about this strange new world, she has to assess where her loyalties lie, who is telling the truth, and who she can trust. With lush writing, memorable world building, and an array of peculiar characters, this is sure to thrill readers looking for a distinctive, imaginative tale in the vein of Laini Taylor and Neil Gaiman.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)