Well, it's another booklogging out of order, for another book that needs to be precipitated with coincidental haste onto Amy's reading shelf; this being the sort of indecent coincidence that occurs when one forgoes the stern discipline of the reading-order list to instead treat new releases and Early Reviewers books with the speed they deserve.
(If I keep on like this, I'm going to forget all about the other four books sitting on my to-be-booklogged pile, which would be unfortunate. Or at least I'm going to forget what I had to say about them, anyway.)
Anyway, on with the point! As you may have gathered from the forgoing, Random Magic is a book I received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
Now, just to put the below into some form of context, as long-time readers and those who know me personally will be aware, I am something of a connoisseur of eccentricity. As is, after all, appropriate for someone who spends most of their time at 90 degrees plus or minus 17 from the mainstream - as the saying goes, "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that."
Thus, I was pretty convinced that I was going to like this book as soon as it arrived, and I opened the box. Now, the author has asked us Early Reviewers not to go around inventorying the packaging or its contents, so as not to give away the quirky little surprises contained therein - which request I shall, of course, honor, as I have no desire at all to spoil the experience of any of my fellow reviewers who may not have got to it yet - but I don't think I'll be doing that just by noting its existence. And to congratulate the writer on finding a clever way to hook my attention and predispose me to liking the work!
Not, I hasten to add, that I required any particular predisposition. For such a connoisseur of eccentricity, this book is just about perfect. There is a sweet spot, I think, positioned about halfway between the sublime and the ridiculous, between madcap surreality (and, well, the eponymous randomness) and underlying pattern, off of which it is really very easy to fall when attempting to write a book like this.
Fortunately for us, Sasha Soren nails it exactly.
Plot-wise, well, I leave you with the blurb:
When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from Alice in Wonderland, young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes. Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan. Such as it is. Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Struths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-dimensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time.
And I shall not attempt to describe it further, partly because doing so would again be spoilerful, and partly because, well, to do so in more detail than the above would require far more explanation than this review, or indeed this review's margin, can reasonably contain.
And in any case, as ripping as the plot surely is, it is the execution of it where this book really shines. The author's dry, witty, and quirkily clever writing style is a perfect match for the plot and the setting, and the main characters (the initially out-of-his-depth Henry - who develops marvellously as a character throughout the book - and the clever, never-say-die Winnie) keep you moving on through the book. Indeed, I lost more than a few hours of sleep due to having to read Just! One! More! Chapter! (Kept my lovely wife awake occasionally due to uncontrollable laughter, too - this may be worth bearing in mind if you usually read books in bed.)
(As a side note, I should also like to mention just how refreshing I find it to read a book in which the author feels free to drop allusions - or, really, avalanche allusions! - to all kinds of things, from classical mythology to more recent folklore, without feeling the need to hammer them home, explain them, or in other wise treat the reader as if the entirety of human culture before, say, 1980 could reasonably be expected to be a closed book. Give me a book that assumes I have a clue, any day!)
To sum up: I have no hesitation in recommending this book superlatively. It's a charming and absolute delight to read. If you take me up on this recommendation, and don't subsequently enjoy it, you may want to check that you haven't died somewhere along the line and not noticed. Or at least fossilized, anyway.
