MAGIC BY ANY OTHER NAME

A young witch must flee her family and reinvent herself in this fantasy series opener.

As the first of Levy’s Witch’s Odyssey series begins, young college student Ivy Nichols O’Reilly wants the same things many college students want: to escape the expectations of her family, to make new friends, to find out who she really is. But Ivy’s case is complicated. She’s a witch from a family of witches, headed by the most powerful witch of all, her family’s matriarch, Hazel, who has Ivy’s life all mapped out. With the encouragement of her Wood Nymph friend Mei-Xing, Ivy decides to drop out of college and flee from her mother’s plans—a course of action that will require her to use both magic and online savvy in order to take on her new identity as Georgette. She and Mei-Xing hit the road and encounter a wide array of supernatural beings, from sorcerers to vampires to a Valkyrie warrior woman, always with the threat of Hazel’s revenge lurking in the background. Levy presents readers with a skillful blend of episodic road-trip adventure and deeply personal identity struggles as Georgette tries to work out her place in the world—and maybe even fall in love. Levy sharply conveys the loneliness of Ivy’s decision to become Georgette (“Do not make friends,” a character warns her. “Do not fall in love….Do not sleep deeply until you can safely say that you are no longer Ivy O’Reilly”). The large supporting cast—especially Delia the Valkyrie, who often steals the show—is where the book shines, especially since, alas, Ivy/Georgette herself is too bland and reactive to carry as much of the narrative. There’s energetic storytelling here, however, and further books in the series are welcome.

A colorful, inventive story of a somewhat drab witch seeking her own identity and true love.