Monday Book Nerd: Like Voyage to the Magical North, The Book of Unwyse Magic has a lot — possibly too much — going on. The world is split in half, magical and unmagical, and the two halves intersect in the town of Wyse, where Ava was born and where she and her brother are returning after their parents’ deaths. Mirrors make a doorway between Wyse and the fairy town of Unwyse, where fairies labor to make tchotchkes and charms for magic-seeking tourists, but the mirrors seem to be losing their magic and only a few remain. When Ava spies a green-haired boy in one of the non-working mirrors, she finds herself teaming up with the magical rebellion to take down the unfair system of magical enslavement and take guardianship of a sentient book that sees all of time at once.
You know I love any alternate Victorian world with magic, so while this book has a lot of tangled threads that don’t end up leading anywhere, I still enjoyed it. There’s a spirit of joyful magical possibility that connects Ava and Howell’s (the magical boy) stories, and the Book is a delightful companion. Not for everybody, I suspect, but it’s a fun read if this sounds like your kind of thing.

I am acquiring a taste for sassy, brave girls who face dangerous magic with messy hair and an attitude. Ava Harcourt has all that and more. Ava and her brother find themselves thrust back into the world of Wyse, which her parents fled years before. Knowing little of the life her parents led and even less about the mirrored worlds of Wyse and Unwyse, Ava and Matthew face every obstacle thrown in their way, including a truly scary old man, to free the human and fairy kingdoms from an old evil. I throughly enjoyed this, as much as Comet Rising and Begone the Raggedy Witches. Recommended.

Perfect for younger fans of Harry Potter or The Magic Thief, this book finds orphan siblings Matthew and Ava headed back to the town where they were born, Wyse, home of magic mirrors and fairy enchantments. The magic has all but disappeared from the town of Wyse where we find Matthew and Ava working hard to fit and and learn the ways of Wyse. In not-quite-alternating chapters we learn of a magical town, that mirrors Wyse called Unwyse, where young Howell is completely unmagical and yearns to be more like his counterparts in the unworld. The children find themselves in an adventure between the two worlds as they try to restore magic to both worlds.