A Most Magical Girl

Things Annabel Grey wants:
-A pair of emerald green ice skates
-A pink sprigged muslin day dress
-Her mother to come back and take care of her

Things Annabel Grey does not want:
-A broomstick
-Magical powers
-A quest to save all of London from an evil wizard

Needless to say, Annabel is not going to get much of what she wants, and she is going to get a great deal of what she doesn't want. Despite her proper upbringing, Annabel has magic in her veins, and her mother has sent her to live with her two great-aunts in order to learn witchcraft. Unfortunately for Annabel, she arrives on the eve of a crisis, when Mr. Angel, a practitioner of black magic, has perfected a machine that will allow him to raise an army of shadowlings and take over the show more world. The only thing that can stop him is the White Wand, also known as the Moreover Wand, which lies somewhere beneath London. Only the youngest member of the Good and Benevolent Magical Society can retrieve the wand -- and Annabel is the youngest member. Accompanied by a peculiar and wild girl named Kitty, Annabel must travel along an underground river, through the Singing Gate and into the Troll Kingdom, across the Lake of Tears and past the great Wyrm . . . and she must do so before moonrise, or Mr. Angel wins!

This is a lovely story. The interactions between the characters are simply perfect, the plot moves on apace, and the writing is enchanting. I very much enjoyed this book, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good fantasy of manners or well-written juvenile fiction. show less

Oh, so frustrating! It began with some promise, but never developed into anything remotely engaging.

1. The main plot thrust is a journey through a magical realm, the least interesting magical realm yet set down in fiction--the lack of description is palpable, as if the author expected each location to be announced via full-colour double-page spread (which never materialized) and didn't want to compete with the image. There's a lake, for instance, and apparently it's astonishing, but all we as readers get is it's dark and hard to see the other side of. Unlike the rich sense of journey that one gets as early as The Hobbit, this story goes nowhere, other than from one uninvolving place to the next.

2. The main character is the main show more character for no particular reason, has become the chosen one because she's the youngest, and yet none of the elder magic users in the story had thought to cultivate her ahead of time? And she's generally unlikable, except when she improves for no apparent reason. (One waits for a character-testing moment, a sudden realisation, a propulsive feeling, but no).

3. I kept waiting for a subsidiary character, who seemed the most interesting person in these pages, to turn out to be the true hero (she could be sort of a Sam Gamgee type) but no, she got worse and worse as the story went out.

4. Don't get me started about how draggy and uninvolving the large middle was. From descent into the world below right through to meeting the trolls, it's eminently skipable.

5. Constant cutting back to the one-dimensional dull bad guy, doing the same thing and thinking the same thoughts as last time, as if Ed Wood had only managed to get a few shots of Bela Lugosi before his death and was forced to reuse them over and over. And he's bad because he's bad, so there's that.

6. No surprises ever. If it's foretold that the Cup of Pure Wonderfulness will cause Evil to melt, then the Cup of Pure Wonderfulness will cause Evil to melt, yawn. No twists, no turns, nothing, as if intentionally written for people who are a bit nervous about, you know, plot.

I don't get why there was a need for this book (i.e. why it was accepted for publication).

Grammar seemed correct, so not 1 star (that's reserved for exceptional poor writing, not simply unexceptional, dull texts).

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). show less

Suddenly thrust by her mother into the care of two unknown aunts who have an old, dusty magic shop full of broomsticks, wands, and magic potions, Annabel Grey is more than a little confused. Raised in Victorian England as a prim and proper young lady with a beautiful wardrobe and set of manners, this is nothing like the life she has known. While she is trying to make sense of this very different and strange world, a self-proclaimed wizard, Mr. Angel, who looks wicked to Annabel, visits the shop while everyone is away with a letter for the Misses Vine informing them of his intent to destroy all good magic with his Black Magic Extracting machine and growing army of shadowlings. Gaining more power by the minute, all that supposedly stands show more between this evil wizard and disaster is Annabel, the prophesized “most magical girl” who can save the world that the more ancient wizards cannot. With no magical knowledge or experience Annabel is given scant instructions, assigned a dirty, homeless girl named Kitty to help her, a wand and a broomstick (seemingly with minds of their own) and sent Under London on an urgent, dangerous quest to seize the esteemed Moreover Wand from its fiercely protected resting place and destroy the looming dark magic before there is no good left in the world. Written for tweens by the author of "Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy" (which I also loved), I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful, well-written fantastical adventure novel that will easily be devoured by fans of Harry Potter.

Sharyn H. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

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I read this a long time ago and decided to reread this. I do Kind of wish we got to find out more about Kitty.

Fantasy - Historical Fantasy

Independent Reading 8+
Awards: Readings Children's Fiction Prize 2017