So I’d mostly decided that I would love her intensely and pretend that she wasn’t writing anything anymore. I found Deerskin unpleasant, Chalice seemed more like a semi-written outline for a book rather than a complete book in and of itself, and I never even managed to get past the first chapter of Pegasus due to the extreme level of twee. Where it gets problematic is that I don’t actually care for many of her other books. And then she wrote Sunshine, which is really in contention for being the best book ever, and won her (in my mind) a life time achievement award: she was thereby a favorite author and I loved her writing. I thought she was doing something interesting with Rose Daughter, since it was a second rewrite of the story of Beauty and the Beast, and yet quite different from her first version, Beauty. She lives in Hampshire, England with her husband, author Peter DickinsonĬheck out her blog at have a complex relationship with Robin McKinley’s books. Robin McKinley has won many awards, including the Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, and the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. And although the two are supposed to be incompatible, Maggie's discovering the world will need both to survive. In this dangerously unstable world, neither science nor magic has the necessary answers, but a truce between them is impossible. until earth-shattering events force her to depend on Val and his shadows. He's from Oldworld too-and he's heard of Maggie's stepfather, and has a guess about Val's shadows. Then Maggie meets Casimir, the most beautiful boy she has ever seen.

The magic-carrying gene was disabled two generations ago, back when Maggie's great-grandmother was a notable magician. But-more importantly-what are the huge, horrible, jagged, jumpy shadows following him around? Magic is illegal in Newworld, which is all about science. Val is from Oldworld, where they still use magic, and he won't have any tech in his office-shed behind the house.

Maggie knows something's off about Val, her mom's new husband. Shadows is a compelling and inventive novel set in a world where science and magic are at odds, by Robin McKinley, the Newbery-winning author of The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword, as well as the classic titles Beauty, Chalice, Spindle's End, Pegasus and Sunshine

Shadows by Robin McKinley