Thirteenth Child

Overall score:

In the alternate history of the frontier, for twin sister and brother Eff and Lan Rothmer, magic is a part of everyday life. The same magic that makes Lan special, as the seventh son of a seventh son also makes Eff, as the thirteenth child, born with the potential to bring doom to everyone around her. Their magician-professor father and practical mother plan to raise them as normal as possible despite these concerns, which means moving their family from back east to a town perilously close to the Great Barrier Spell that protects civilization from normal and magical creatures.

Eff lives in the shadow of her talented brother, but to her it seems quite alright because then no one will notice that she’s an unlucky thirteen. Worrying about bringing doom to those around her makes her worry about using magic, and as a result her spells never seem to work quite right, even the everyday household ones used to make cooking and cleaning easier. But that doesn’t stop her from studying magic or from helping with the menagerie at Mill City’s college where her father teaches.

Told from Eff’s first-person viewpoint, Thirteenth Child covers a period of about thirteen years, from when Eff is five and living among her father’s large extended family in the east, up until the end of the book when she’s eighteen. This makes for a slower paced story. While the plotline itself is interesting and deftly handled, the story does move a little slow. This, I think, is often the drawback of first novels in a series because there is so much to build before we get into the real meat of the story later in the series. However, despite this, I really liked this book.

Wrede is an excellent writer, and her prose flows easily. The pacing, while slower, is steady and the story is interesting as we watch Eff, her family, and those in their frontier town deal with the problems of a magical Wild West. Like the story itself, the worldbuilding progresses a little slowly and I would have liked to have seen more, but hopefully there will be more in the forthcoming books. The characterization of the main characters, especially Eff is well done. However, with such a large cast it was harder to get much depth with many of the secondary characters.

The magic, while nothing new, is still well done as we learn about it from young Eff’s point of view as she studies. And despite her difficulties with some magic, her ability to use the more subtle varieties of magic is what does eventually save the day.

This first novel of the Frontier Magic series, while slow to build, Thirteenth Child lays the groundwork for a potentially very satisfying series. I will be keeping my eye out for the next installment.

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Written by Nessa on December 01st, 2009