When it comes to snarky and lovable characters, it doesn’t get much better than Aza Ray Boyle.

She’s been suffering her whole life, an illness the doctors can’t diagnose has been stopping her from being able to breathe properly, and she has to be incredibly careful about going near any kind of allergen.

And then she starts seeing flying ships, and hears someone calling her name, and she is lost to our world, and found by another.

Magonia is a novel that blends the real world (illness, and dying, and complicated feelings about your friends during high-school) with the fantastical (ships in the sky, birds in people’s chests, and bird people looking after the people like Aza who can only breathe Magonian air) and becomes more than either part could ever be alone.

You’ll fall in love with Aza, with her snarky sense of humour and her reluctance to give up; and Jason, with his obsessive compulsive, Aza loving, alligator costume wearing ways.