Rust in the Root
by Justina Ireland
High School     Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins    448 pp.         g
9/22     978-0-06-303822-6     $18.99
e-book ed.  978-0-06-303824-0    $12.99

In an alternate 1937 in the wake of the Great Rust (a nationwide mystical event resulting in devastating economic consequences), the Roosevelt administration has ushered in a variety of public programs to get the nation back on track. Those with natural magical gifts, known as mages, have been asked to support Mechomancy, the country’s industry and technology infrastructure (and thought by many to be superior to the mystical arts more commonly practiced by Black mages). Seventeen-year-old Black mage Laura Ann Langston reluctantly joins the “Bureau of the Arcane’s Conservation Corps, Colored Auxiliary” in New York to earn her official mage’s license. After she is assigned as apprentice to another Black mage known as the Skylark, the two are thrown into a perilous mission: to take on an ancient dark magic with a history of slaughtering Black mages that is threatening destruction on a massive scale. Fortunately for both of them, Laura Ann’s power manifests in ways neither of them could have expected. The events are told from the alternating accounts of the Skylark’s official governmental report, her truthful observations, and Laura Ann’s first-person account. Plucky queer-Black-mage Laura Ann’s voice brings a fresh, at-times humorous perspective to life in 1930s New York (and other dimensions). “Primary sources,” including photos from Laura Ann’s Brownie camera, bolster her account. Ireland ( Dread Nation , rev. 5/18) has confidently merged the historical and the mystical into a fast-paced, complex, and entertaining read.

From the September/October 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.