Review: The Ordinary Bruja
Full disclosure: I received this book through a giveaway on The StoryGraph. This has in no way influenced the opinions expressed in this review.
I must say that The Ordinary Bruja is a book of very different parts, so if I’m to start with the good I must skip well ahead, the parts where it shines being those that take place under the hill. There are some more good moments here and there and the writing shows promise all along, but that’s where it actually delivers. One reason is probably that the fantasy elements can run loose there, no longer being confined in any way by the contemporary setting, but the differences go well beyond what may be explained by that, so it may also be a matter of more attention being paid to those chapters, and maybe of the author feeling more comfortable depicting a powerful, collected, determined Marisol who’s fighting back and fulfiling the mission thrust upon her.
It takes a while to get there, however, and the earlier parts may be somewhat difficult to get through. The fact that it’s a pretty light read overall helps with that, and being a coming of age story that’s very well anchored in the present times, including characters glued to their smartphones and the way in which social networks are currently used, or misused, it’ll probably work better for a teen or young adult audience. But it may hit too close to home for some, perhaps most notably in the parts about bullying, and I was starting to feel awkward wondering when, or whether, all of that will be over and done with, modern settings being something that I’d much rather stay away from in general.
Admittedly, that may be a matter of preference, and perhaps of having some years, or maybe even a decade or two, too many, but I don’t think that can also explain the issues I have with Marisol’s denial phase. True, I remember taking issue with how strongly some characters denied the supernatural elements despite the evidence the few other times I read urban fantasy, but here the denial of magic is mixed with the denial of feelings and both are just overdone, drag on too long, are emphasized too much… The later lasts even longer but nevertheless lacks the impact it should have, and then makes for such a missed opportunity for emotionally charged moments that was simply ignored, while in case of the former an additional issue is the overblown persistence of the magic against it, when something like this should probably develop more gradually and subtly.
Then again, there’s simply too much magic and it’s too visible, too obviously powerful, for such a contemporary, realistic setting. Considering the quality of the parts where it can truly be unfettered, it makes some sense, but it requires a strange kind of suspension of disbelief, especially when the few minor characters that happen to be mentioned and the general public that you have to assume exists don’t seem to take note. That may be explained to some extent by the fact that what’s meant to be a series spanning generations begins with the end of the story, which is actually specified in the afterword, but when you just read this book, which is the only one that exists anyway, it’s quite jarring.
Actually, speaking of the fact that the following books in the planned series are apparently supposed to go back and depict what happened before, how things got to this point, it strikes me as the sort of thing to do when readers are already sufficiently invested to desire the details, to want to know just how things happened when they already know what happened and the final outcome. And, to put it bluntly, I’m not. And I don’t see how many could be after a single book, and a relatively light one at that, at least if we’re talking about being interested in the story and the action in itself and not of any mental links one may make.
On that note, I recognize that the use of Spanglish makes sense in that setting and for those characters, and most probably also for the primary target audience, who’ll find many more aspects to relate to as well, but for someone who doesn’t directly relate to the main character for personal and quite specific reasons, it just makes some things incomprehensible because of one crucial flaw: There are no translations. Or, all right, sometimes the translation appears right after the bit that’s in Spanish, but often it doesn’t, and sometimes it may even be difficult to tell, so I quickly gave up. I could have probably figured out most of it if I tried, and anything else would have just required copying the word or phrase into a translator, but the reasonable thing to do, if the author cared for readers who are outside that target niche, would have been to add footnotes to translate each of those bits. So, if she didn’t, I decided that I won’t either.
And, to finish with some odds and ends, it was rather strange to see that “playlist” at the end, but I did look up all of the songs, finding a few that were pretty nice, but plenty that I couldn’t even get myself to listen to for more than a matter of seconds, so I guess it’s another matter of different tastes. And seeing one listed out of position and another appearing before the chapter number and title instead of after makes me think that the section was added in a hurry, since the editing is otherwise very good… Or nearly so, which actually made it stand out when I spotted something, like using “condensation” instead of condescension, a “Kiar” instead of Kia, and maybe a spot where a “them” may probably indicate changing the idea mid-sentence.
While it doesn’t look like it if you read the above, I focus on the negatives, but the truth is that The Ordinary Bruja shows promise and has some parts that can really pull you in. But it’s quite obviously mainly meant for a specific target audience, for people who can directly relate to the main character, though a wider range of teens and young adults may possibly also get more from it, even if certain issues that are brought up may hit too close to home. For the rest of us, it can be read relatively easily, in a detached manner, with a focus on the parts that take place under the hill and a few other better moments, though small changes like the addition of footnotes for the Spanglish would be needed. The contrasting issues of the overdone denial phase and the magic that is too obvious for a contemporary setting would be harder to fix, however.
Rating: 3/5
