A Legend of Starfire

Summary: After the inital win against the Magicians from Nod, Wren, Simon, Jack and others go to Nod to try to bring the Magicians and the Alchemists back together.

I tried to be pretty vague about my discriptions of A Sliver of Stardust because I do not like spoiling fiction books. But it is pretty hard to discuss a series without at least some spoilers for earlier books. In A Sliver of Stardust, teenager Wren discovers that not only is stardust capable of being used to perform magic, but that she is both able to do the magic and gifted in a rare type of magic that hasn't been seen since there was a civil war among those who use the stardust. Users of stardust split into Magicians and Alchemists and the Magicians traveled to another planet (Nod).

The Magicians were led by a man that was defeated at the end of the first book and presumed dead. Wren at the start of the second book is still recovering from injuries and Jack, a spy from Nod whom she had saved is even worse. It appears that he is no longer able to do magic, but he is also now on the side of the Alchemists and wants to bring those who used and manipulated him to a type of justice.

Wren is called by the Ashes (magical beings) to come to Nod and work to fix the tainted stardust before it harms Earth. That starts the main story of A Legend of Starfire.

I know of Marissa Burt because of her work on a book about Christian Parenting that I found out about via twitter. I know her as a Christian pastor's wife who is outspoken about abuse and who is theolgoically informed and who regularly writes about church politics and theology. A Sliver of Stardust and A Legend of Starfire are young adult fantasy books without any explicit faith themes. They were published by a secular press (HarperCollins) and her bio on the books doesn't mention her faith or being a pastor's wife. But there are subtle nods to faith here and there.

Especially at the end of the book in ways that I am not going to detail, there are several quotes about magic and the world being restored in ways that I think paralells the understanding of the kingdom of God which "makes all things new." These books are not Christian fiction, but I think that Christian writers often do have faith leak out every once in a while. A couple of quotes:

“You will not win this fight. Your evil will not overcome the good just as darkness cannot overcome the light. All will be well.” (p360)

"I make all things new. You will not be my Apprentice. You will be my Child, Little Bird." (p328)

There is a longer quote that I think is that shows this even more but I am afaid it will act as too much of a spoiler, so I will not share it. But I do think that the theme of the quote, that wrong use of a thing does not invalidate the right use, is an important theme of young adult literature. Young adults need to learn for themselves that all things can be used badly. Violence can be used to protect or to terrorize. Sex can be intimate and life-giving, or it can be violent and abusive. Fire can be used to warm or create or to destroy. Part of the what Wren has to explore is whether stardust and the magic that can be done with it is something that is inherently wrong, or if there is a good there that needs to be reclaimed and used rightly.

This is not a preachy book where the message it is trying to tell overwhelms the story, but part of the depth of good writing means that there is something more than just an action plot to draw you into the story. Wren and the other characters develop and grapple with the world. It is a fantasy world, but that doesn't mean that there are not real things that young adults can relate to. Those real things include trying to find your place in diverse societies, frustration with not being able to do everything you want, courage when you do not know what to do, being drawn (in this case magically) to do what you do not want to do. I think fantasy can be particularly helpful to grapple with real things in YA literature because there can be some distance from current situations.

I feel like this series could go on, but this book was published eight years ago and the first was almost 10 years ago, so I suspect that there will not be further books. I liked these character and felt like they were whole people. I wanted the story to keep going, which is a far better place to be than being bored with the characters.

There are another two books by Burt which I will read before the end of the year.

This was originally posed on my blog at https://bookwi.se/a-legend-of-starfire/