Laura, for instance, is a Floramancer – someone who can extract power from plants – and she had better not let anybody else find out she can do more, since that’s taboo.īut amid all of this, Ireland never loses sight of the human story. The magical elements are well developed, with an engaging and (thank heaven) internally consistent system of power, its origin, and its uses. It’s a story of how America relies on and exploits traditional knowledge (especially Black knowledge and knowledge which is coded feminine) but elevates and financially rewards science, technology, and the masculine and white. And I hesitate to tell you even a micron more of the plot because it’s so gripping. The next task? The Ohio Blight – from which fellow Colored Auxiliary troops have stopped returning. At the end of her budget and with nowhere to go, she takes a job with the Colored Auxiliary of the Bureau of the Arcane. Natural magicians like Laura Ann Langston must be classified and licensed by the government (and of course Black magicians receive vastly unequal treatment). of the 1930s was blighted by the Great Rust, not the Dust Bowl, and the Industrial Revolution occurred when Mechomancers, who produce things technologically, replaced organic and traditional nature-based magic. In a magic-infused alternate history, the U.S. This book can’t possibly be as good as those, right? Surprise! It’s even better. Rust in the Root does not take place in the same universe as Justina Ireland’s paranormal historical duology Dread Nation/ Deathless Divide, which both earned DIKs here.
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