I received “Magic Street” as a gift from my daughter-in-law who had seen my Ender’s Game books at the house.  I am going to label the book as fantasy.  It starts in the contemporary world, then super-bizarre things happen, then back to normalcy, then off the rails with overlapping real and fantasy worlds.  Throw in some references to folklore characters featured in Shakespeare plays, and it is tough to figure out the assumptions of the world created for the story.

The story is set in Baldwin Hills, which is an upscale area of Los Angeles dominated by African Americans.  You learn in the afterword that Mr Card set out to write his first book with a black lead character.  Not knowing this I was nervous because Card’s growing up in the Mormon Church did not give him a lot of experience with urban communities.  There was a point were some black residents try to get rid of a “troublesome” new resident by using redlining laws.  [Not that long ago in America, communities would be built with covenants saying no black people could live in the neighborhood or in specific houses].  This  set off my bullshit detector, but otherwise the story dynamics are fair.  Reading the book as Donald Trump campaigned on the idea that America would be “great again” if it was all white influenced my view.  I commend Mr Card on making the effort, but the storyline never engaged me.