I obtained Madilla: The Spirit of U'Katang by Ian B. Boyd from Net Galley because the book deals with a girl who plays the piano. I have an interest in female protagonists who are involved in any of the arts. The summary implies very adverse circumstances for this young musician. I don't believe this book was written with a teen audience in mind. There are mature themes and mature content.

The author states that Madilla takes place in an imaginary country. There are linguistic and cultural similarities to real places. At first, I wondered why Boyd didn't situate it in a known location. The village described is under military occupation. It could have been in a number of different nations, but it occurred to me that Boyd wants us to realize that this type of story could apply to all of them. He shows the impact of occupation on everyone in that village.

Madilla's problem with a ban on women participating in music wasn't imposed by the occupiers. This is a traditional taboo in her own culture which she defies. I could identify with her since I came up against some serious opposition to women singing as a child in the Jewish Orthodox community.


Although I knew of religious traditions where music isn't allowed at all, I wasn't aware of specific cultural proscriptions against women playing or even touching musical instruments. So I ran a search on the topic. As a result, I discovered a very illuminating blog article by Josh Middleton dealing with this prohibition as a cross-cultural issue . There are still prejudices against women playing certain musical instruments. Middleton points out that in contemporary pop music, there are few highly regarded female guitarists.


I consider this a feminist book. Both men and women have hard lives in Madilla, but there is a strong focus on the problems of women, and it seems to me that the most sympathetic characters are female.


The first ten percent of Madilla establishes the character and context. I wasn't bothered by this, and considered the entire novel well-written. Some readers may experience the book as slow-paced.


Madilla has been shelved as fantasy on Goodreads. It isn't epic fantasy., but neither is it urban fantasy. So readers may feel genre confusion. Others may identify the book with magic realism. The category to which Madilla belongs isn't obvious at the outset. This may be problematic for those who really want to know what sort of book they're reading. It isn't clear at the beginning whether Madilla is paranormally gifted or highly imaginative. Let's just say that by the end of the novel you will definitely know the answer to that question.

Madilla is not a book for people who are uncomfortable with uncertainty. Yet if you're willing to deal with fantasy/magical realism and you love protagonists who are musicians, you may enjoy this book as much as I did.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.
This was a different sort of read for me but really enoyed it. It straddles the line between fantasy and fiction.
I did enjoy learning about a new culture