It’s all because of preschoolers
The main character of Secret by Magical , Agata, was once a fantasy book editor. Unfortunately, the excess of misfortunes made her decide to look for something calmer, for example a janitor. And at this point, when she decides to work with young children, the reader knows that she is inconsistent and generally does not think too consciously. With such a first-person narrator of our own demise, we will struggle through the history of the revolution that began in Muchomorki …
Katarzyna Wierzbicka’s book is skilfully written, light fantasy, or perhaps something verging on domestic weird – magic and demons suddenly have to be accepted by the heroine as part of her everyday life, which does not make her days prettier, more pleasant or in any way special. Work is work, milk soup does not pour itself. Billed in dark urban fantasy in blurbsit never comes, and the only thing that justifies using this slogan is that the action is happening in the city. The writer draws from a variety of genres; there is some romantic potential here, there are dark family secrets, maybe even some promise to be chosen. The novel cleverly escapes the shoals of the expected solutions, and only sometimes loses its rhythm, and the characters – their clarity.
Trouble everywhere
Let’s go back to Agata. Her problems started fairly typically with a man. Or maybe from the absent mother and hallucinations? The better we get to know the protagonist, the more clearly we can see that the romance that ended her editorial career as a narrator with a bang is the icing on the cake. Difficult non-normativity leads Agata to further misfortunes, until the kindergarten, from where her predecessor suddenly disappeared, and where the children have invisible friends, the parents are called Weles, but otherwise nothing bad happens. At least according to the management.
The reader is ahead of Agata by several lengths, which does not make the story boring, but still makes immersion a bit more difficult.
The confusion around the heroine becomes even greater when it turns out that the aforementioned man, and even the mother, return to the kindergarten like a bad pen that had been stuck in the washing machine filter for some time. So as if they were tarnished, indistinct, but undoubtedly they were. And in a moment one of them will set the world on fire, why not.
The secret was good for me as an evening entertainment. The book could go more definitely towards humor or absurdity, even horror-like ones, but sometimes it was fun and without it. The only thing I had a real problem with were the preschoolers’ statements. Four-year-olds speak like adults here, they even use irony, which – according to research and theories of developmental linguistics – they cannot reach. It was not without reason that the invisible Moomin girl was sick precisely because of her grandmother’s abuse of this means of expression.
This is just the beginning
This light, skilfully written, sometimes inconsistent book is heading towards the finale having completely different colors. A demonic plot and a bloody continuation emerges from the warm story, full of accidental slips on the sandwich that the toddler has not eaten. The publishing house announces that this is the first volume of the series, so the second will be a story from a completely different story. Maybe even a strange macabre, which would ultimately turn out to be all for good.
If you have chilling experiences with preschoolers, roosters or rich gray eminences, you will find something for yourself in Secret by Magical . Milena Wójtowicz’s fans will find here the Post Scriptum style that does not detract from the joyful absurdity . However, if language and dialogue were an important part of your reading pleasure, reading will sometimes frustrate you. In that case, wait for the next volume, I will tell you if it is worth counting on an interesting development of the story of a not very clever janitor surrounded by magicians.
