Gift of the Unmage

The first volume in Alexander's Worldweavers trilogy recalls Carlos Castaneda's mind-altering New Age journeys, integrating moments of wonder into large expanses of wandering, ethereal prose. Young Thea, the seventh child of a seventh child, disappoints her family when she appears to have no magical powers at all, unlike everyone around her. Her father, who works for the Federal Bureau of Magic taming ""feral libraries,"" sends her off into the past through a ""Time Pass,"" to a mysterious old man named Cheveyo. Cheveyo leads her on a psychedelic journey of self; she meets Grandmother Spider, who takes her to the ""First World,"" where Thea embodies a powerful magician who can weave world-portals from light. She narrowly escapes kidnap by a shapeshifting trickster who wants to sell Thea to the world-trotting Alphiri people. When she returns home, Thea finds that months have passed, and the world is bracing for the impact of a magical force called the Nothing-a force she seems destined to battle with her newfound abilities. Alexander's ""different is good"" message is a valuable one, and a strange subplot at the very end involving computers holds tantalizing promise for volume two. But long, meandering pages of near-gibberish dialogue (e.g., ""Every action you have taken has been based on a change in yourself, in the spirit you brought here to me to be healed of what it believed were its faults"") mar an otherwise imaginative modern fantasy. Ages 12-up.