Root Magic (Eden Royce)

Root Magic
Eden Royce
Walden Pond Press
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Historical Fiction
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: The summer of 1963 ends for twins Jezebel and Jay Turner when their beloved Gran passes away, shortly before their eleventh birthday. Gran was the undisputed matriarch of the family and one of the most respected women on their South Carolina island, a powerful practitioner of the old root magic. Now, Jez's uncle Doc wants the twins to learn root ways, to carry the tradition into the future, though their mother is reluctant. Life is tough enough for Negros in the south without practicing strange beliefs, and not only the Whites and the local deputy but other Negros have taken to targeting the "witch doctors" who follow the old ways, for all that many people still buy the potions and incenses and tinctures Doc brews up in his cabin. But Doc argues that this only means they need to cling all the harder to their culture, before it's washed away by the tides of time. Besides, the more dangers the Turners face, the more protection they need. As Jez and Jay learn more about root magic, Jez discovers that it's much deeper - and more dangerous - than she ever understood, and even a little girl can quickly find herself in way over her head...

REVIEW: Root Magic is a tribute to the Gullah culture of the South Carolina islands, set in a time of national upheaval. As South Carolina is forced to comply with national school desegregation laws, tensions run higher than ever; while the twins, on a small island, don't have to deal with White folks (or angry White parents), they do have to deal with the children of wealthier Negro families who long ago learned to look down on their own roots as something to be ashamed of... or something to fear. Jez feels perpetually torn between growing pride in her ancestry and how she's treated by others, and even well-meaning outsiders don't seem to understand. It doesn't help when her first-ever spell, a charm meant to attract a friend, seems to go awry from the first day of school. Her relationship with her twin brother is also in a state of transition and tension; she got moved ahead a grade last year, so they're no longer in the same class, and he keeps picking up friends and goofing off while she struggles to socialize and throws herself into her studies, both academic and magical. They seem to be growing apart, even as Doc insists that they need to stick together. Along the way, the setting and culture are described in great detail, coming to life around the characters, a landscape of salt marshes and dirt roads and small farms and sprawling oaks where magic and haint spirits lurk in the shadows and the reeds.
A few things held the story back in the ratings. First of all, Jez isn't the brightest of main characters. (Then again, neither is her brother, but Jay is supposed to be an energetic and emotionally immature boy, while she's supposed to be smarter and more grounded.) After being told to keep close to Jay so they can guard each other while learning root magic, she keeps wandering off to do things on her own. After being told that pushing their new powers without supervision isn't a great idea, Doc having filled them in on haints and ghosts and other dangers to an untrained root magician, Jez starts experimenting with astral projection without bothering to tell anyone. She keeps forgetting the protections Doc provides her and her brother with, and thus keeps stumbling into danger, some of it so obvious she shouldn't have needed to be told about it. After a while, it got tiresome, especially as the dangers and the lessons become repetitious - almost word-for-word repetitious in a few instances. Side characters can feel flat and underdeveloped, and some subplots and themes peter out by the end as if forgotten. The audiobook narrator also drops her voice to somewhere below a whisper, barely more than a breath, several times; I literally could not hear what she was saying. (Admittedly, many people aren't listening in a warehouse at work, but anyone listening in their car on a road or anywhere else with mild to moderate background noise will also have trouble.) Other narrators have proven that it's possible to evoke a breathy whisper while remaining audible to the audience. And some of those setting descriptions, which admittedly add color, start overwhelming the plot. The whole thing begins to feel slow and stagnant, taking several meandering paragraphs where a few sentences might suffice.
Overall, Root Magic's not a bad story, offering a glimpse into an often-misrepresented culture that's well worth exploring. I just grew a bit irritated with the molasses pacing and somewhat thickheaded main character.

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