Amateur Amalgam

Music is Magic in Nola

The story follows our main character Perilous AKA Perry and his little sister Brendy and best friend/crush Peaches. The first half of the book is slow going, and is full of descriptions of life in Nola, featuring a variety of magical goings-on including but not limited to:

• Sky trolleys
• Paintbodies
• Zombies
• Haints
• Talking (People-size) Animals
• Floating Grafiti

I chose to go with the audiobook of this one, instead of reading it, because the audiobook has it’s own soundtrack (or at least that’s what the blurb for it said). While there was a piano and the voice effects were very cool, I was expecting the whole thing to have a musical background; what with us being in New Orleans and all. The Piano only played when the book switched parts. I did find out that the author made a playlist on Spotify and that was more what I was thinking. It really captures the vibe of the book and I highly recommend listening to it as you read this.

The whole thing felt like a love letter to New Orleans. Throughout the story we are taken on a magical and musical tour of the city as the characters explore and run around town. The book is full of references to music, history, and pop culture, and that was something that I found particularly interesting. You don’t have to know anything to enjoy it, but it does make you stop and go ‘hey! I know about that!’ which is always nice.

In the first half of the book, most of what happens us just us getting acquainted with the world and who our characters are. Once we get to about 40% of the way through, things start to happen, and they keep happening all the way to the end. It gets very confusing, very fast, and I had to repeat some things a few times to make sure I had the sequence of events right. Everything that happens in the book builds on-top of something that happened earlier so missing even the smallest thing can get you lost very quickly.

Spoilers Ahead!

The POV switches a bunch of times in the book, and we go back and forth between what Perry is up to and what another of the characters – Casey – is up to. Casey is not in Nola though, he’s in New Orleans, and while we are following him the timeline is kind of … messy, or at least it felt that way to me. Honestly, I didn’t get most of what happened with his story-line, and it only came together in the end (sort of). Him being related to Perry via Daddy Deke was a nice twist, but felt kind of like …. cheating maybe?

The appearance of Mama Lisa was just as much of a cheat, and Perry’s attitude towards her was very unpleasant. To be fair though, throwing a tantrum when his friend is missing is what a fifth grader would do, so I won’t hold it against him too much. His insistence that all the adults in his life were just lying to him and “didn’t understand how serious this was” kind of reminded me of Ariel going “But Daddy I love him!” – a standard kid attitude that kind of annoyed me while it was happening, but makes sense when I remembered his age.

Lots of things in the book are left unresolved or incomplete. We get dropped into this world just to see a single chapter and then we leave it just as abruptly. So much stuff happens and just exists in Nola, it would have been so nice to get to explore everything, but there isn’t time. I would love to read an expansion of this universe, just to get to know more.

Perry is supposed to be our main character, but Brendy and Peaches do just as much, if not more in some scenes, and I wish we got to focus on them more than we did. Peaches in particular has a really interesting backstory, and I’m dying to know more about her dad. Where is he? Who has him? Is she actually a song? Is he as well? Who knows? Not me.

Our main characters (the first 3 anyway) are all under 13 – Perry is said to be just finishing fifth grade – and normally in these sorts of books, the kids are out and about without any sort of interaction from the adults in their lives, or the adults that they meet. Not so here. Their family actually cares about where they run off too and when the danger becomes deadly, they try and keep them safe from it. Even the strangers try to help them out if they can, and I really appreciated that change and the focus on community.

Family is the central thread of the book, as every choice made comes back to a desire to see, help, or be with family. Even the main baddie (named after a real guy!) is motivated by a desire to get back to his wife and kids. He has this desire corrupted and amplified by who we find out is our real villain, but the effect is the same.

When it comes to our other main(?) character, Casey, things get a lot more confusing in the story. At first I thought that it was a timeline difference, then I thought it was a ‘hidden world’ scenario, but it’s actually a little of both. We follow him on his return to New Orleans, after leaving it when ‘a thing’ happened – this being that his art comes to life. His whole struggle with his abilities mirrors Perry’s struggles with his, but where Casey comes from a world without magic and therefore must wrap his head around what is happening, Perry comes from a world with magic and thinks he isn’t good enough.

In the end, I think this was a good read and I don’t regret picking it up. I think if I had both read and listened it would have made more sense to me, but as it is I enjoyed it.