Edit: I completely allowed autocorrect to change Marsi to Merci throughout the review I apologize profusely and will fix at a later date.
Uncle has made it clear that Merci, Lusi's older sister and the only person in her family that seems to care for or understand her thanks to her ability to talk to ghosts, will be marrying his son as soon as she graduates school. Neither of them can allow this to happen though so they hatch a plan to run away to the Guild in order to seek help against their uncle. They believe they have gotten away when, while separated in the town they will depart from Lusi discovers that Uncle has somehow caught up with them already! Determined to keep him away from Merci, she leads him on a chase through town stumbling into an ox shed, not knowing that these oxen are kept specifically to feed the local dragons! She is quickly snatched up by a dragon forcing her uncle to stop his chase and beginning the adventure of a lifetime for Lusi!
This was a lot of fun, but I will say right off the bat that it dealt with far more mature themes than I had expected and while I think most middle grade readers would enjoy it I would definitely read it before giving it to a child who has been in the foster system due to a parent's inability to take care of their children due to mental health issues or a child who has been in an abusive household.
That out of the way on to the review!
Obviously, I was attracted to this because it had a child necromancer which was awesome, however, it came with some interesting twists on your standard necromancer which made it that much better! I am not going to reveal how one becomes a necromancer I will say that while heartbreaking it makes sense and firmly establishes that necromancy in this world is an inherently empathic magic. Which lets be honest that doesn't happen very often with this particular type of magic. It's also linked to bones specifically which I also found to be interesting as well, while I suppose you could still do some damage with bones, I find this takes away a lot of the accusations of corpse desecration out of the conversation immediately, which is something that people find repulsive about necromancy. Necromancy itself is a deeply ingrained magic in one culture in the world as well, so we find that necromancers are respected as well as allowing for a very positive relationship with death in this culture. Unfortunately, this is not the culture Lusi and Merci grow up in, so Lusi is ostracized even by her own family. She also grows up fearing her own powers as in her culture necromancers are treated as abominations. Much of the story revolves around Lusi unlearning much of the negative things she has thought about herself and her magic most of her life. I found that while she most definitely grew by leaps and bounds by the end of the book, she still wasn't sure about her magic, which I found to be understandable and completely reasonable given the society she'd grown up in. The rest of the magic system is interesting as well; we don't dive too deep into all of the forms of magic (it seems to be an element-based system) but enough to recognize that it's limits seems to be based on the user's skill and quite honestly their imagination. Tollar (the woman who ends up becoming basically a foster parent to Lusi) seems to be powerful because she has found different applications for her magic not just because she is inherently stronger than other mages, if that makes sense.
I enjoyed each of these characters, Lusi especially, she is simultaneously extremely mature for her age while being very much just a child. This is clearly a side effect of the household she's grown up in but honestly Ricci-Thode kind of nails this. Lusi recognizes that her father isn't able to take care of her, not the way she needs, but she is desperate for him to be able too. I wouldn't call her a happy child, by any stretch, at least not at the beginning of the book but as the story progresses she blossoms quite a bit. I would call Lusi a work in progress, by the end of the book she has grown so much but still has a ways to go and that feels right to me. Especially for a middle grade book. Merci is a wonderful older sister who recognizes that she has become a parental figure to her little sister but also is somehow mentally healthy enough to realize when it's time to let go and allow the adults to step in. I loved that a lot, Ricci-Thode could have wrote her differently and I think many authors would have but given the girl's lives it was nice to see that this kind of circle ends with Merci. Tollar is absolutely wonderful as a foster parent. She relates her own life experiences to Lusi in such a way that isn't patronizing and gives her room to grow. Again, a really great way to give Lusi a positive adult influence at a time in her life when having one is critical.
Now, what made me place the trigger warning at the beginning of this book is that this book essentially echoes the life of a child who has been taken by the courts. If there wasn't a scene where a representative of the courts has Lusi and Merci's father sign paperwork to that effect I would have said I wasn't even sure that Ricci-Thode was aware that was what she had wrote. Lusi's father falls into a deep depression after her mother died giving birth to her. At some point he is dragged out of it as he does end up marrying their stepmother Lida, but thanks to this Uncle he falls right back into it. It is clear from the get-go that Lusi's father is not mentally healthy enough to raise the girls and so after running away they seek help from the Guild, which essentially acts as a family court. While the main point of getting the girls away from the family is to keep their Uncle away from them, had their father been in a position to protect them honestly the Guild wouldn't have been needed. Both Merci and Lusi recognize this which is sad but as a person who has lived in an abusive household it's pretty spot on. Honestly, this was truly well done and I think children who have lived in a household where you have a parental figure who has kind of given up will relate to all of this. Hell, I did and I'm 41 years old and haven't had to really deal with this since I was a teen. So on that level I think this would be a wonderful read for kids that have gone through this sort of thing.
I do have a couple of small complaints though the first being this uncle. Other than needing a bad guy, I don't understand his purpose. Lusi and Merci's dad is clearly incapable of making good decisions involving his children with or without the uncle so why he is needed I don't know. Nor do I understand how he ends up becoming so deeply involved with the family. He is their stepmother's brother, he owns a large estate and appears to have his own family so why he would feel the need to meddle in his sister's is just weird to me, especially since it's never explained. It seems he just spends half of his life at his sister's house intimidating the hell out of everyone. To an extent I'd accept him as a metaphor for their dad's depression as a physical embodiment of it, except we find out at the end of the book he's a serial killer. Or just a murderer but they do find three bodies in his basement so that screams serial killer to me. I just found him as an unneeded source of violence in a family that has a father that is completely depressed all of the time and a child that has a magic that she doesn't understand That's enough ya know.
The other complaint was their stepbrother Lio and their stepmother Lida. It is implied heavily that the girls are not treated as well as Lio while simultaneously being implied that Lida is like of this because of her brother. When Uncle is gone Lida becomes a completely different person she treats the girls well, even making them cookies. When Uncle is there, she treats the girls as bad as the stepmother in Cinderella and Lio gets away with everything regardless. Again, this is more reminiscent of their father being the abuser as again there is zero explanation as to why the uncle is there to begin with. We just have to accept that this uncle basically is the Narcissist King of their household and everything bad falls on his shoulders.
Even with those two complaints I found this to be a far more complex story than I expected following two girls as they try to find their place in the world while coming to terms with the fact that their family isn't as happy as they'd like it to be but knowing that it could be with time and work. I would highly recommend for any age group but again I think children in abusive households or those who are in the foster system would find a friend in Lusi especially!
P.S. Merci may actually use Them/They as their pronouns. There are several comments about them possibly transitioning and/or not going by She/Her pronouns but as it is never specifically stated that they change their pronouns I have used she throughout this review.
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