{"id":556,"date":"2017-07-20T16:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T22:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=556"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:17:25","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:17:25","slug":"book-the-other-side-of-magik-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/07\/20\/book-the-other-side-of-magik-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Other Side of Magik (2006)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1498203036l\/17780785.jpg\" alt=\"The Other Side of Magik\" width=\"317\" height=\"475\" \/>The Other Side of Magik<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2006<br \/>\nAuthor: Michael Lingaard<br \/>\nLength: 411 pages<\/p>\n<p>***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM THE AUTHOR***<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cfish out of water\u201d plot device is not new by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it\u2019s an interesting way to provide exposition in a fantasy world when an individual from our world comes to visit, but often the differences aren\u2019t fully considered. Of course, there are good examples of this form of storytelling. From Mark Twain\u2019s\u00a0<em>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u2019s Court<\/em>\u00a0to Marvel\u2019s\u00a0<em>Thor<\/em>\u00a0(2011), both directions of the \u201cworld swap\u201d transaction can provide entertainment. Unfortunately,\u00a0<em>The Other Side of Magik<\/em>\u00a0tries to have its cake and eat it too.<\/p>\n<p>If\u00a0<em>The Other Side of Magik<\/em>\u00a0had merely focused on the adventures of a single teenage boy unknowingly thrust into a parallel dimension, it could have made sense. Instead, while the majority of the story was in the \u201cmagik\u201d realm (of which I still don\u2019t like that spelling), occasionally it would swap back over to our world and give the reader a short break to see how the \u201cmagik\u201d teenage boy was faring in modern-day England. At times, this flip-flop was quite confusing, even to the point where the author himself swapped the names of these two characters mid-paragraph.<\/p>\n<p>There were some formatting decisions that I found distracting in this book as well. The bolded text was a good way to convey powerful magik, but often it was confusing if it was the antagonist or the protagonist speaking through it. Furthermore, the punctuation needed quite a bit of work. I would have accepted that a \u201cmirrored\u201d world to our own would have single quotation marks for dialogue and double quotes for quotes within that dialogue, but it maintained itself throughout the book. Occasional proofreading errors also gave me pause, as I wondered if they were intentional to the \u201cmirrored\u201d dimension.<\/p>\n<p>A tried-and-true plot that tried to do too much, I give\u00a0<em>The Other Side of Magik<\/em>\u00a02.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h1><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Other Side of Magik Year: 2006 Author: Michael Lingaard Length: 411 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM THE AUTHOR*** The \u201cfish out of water\u201d plot device is not new by any stretch of the imagination. Sure, it\u2019s an interesting way to provide exposition in a fantasy world when an individual from our world comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,54],"tags":[47,722,55,720,724,8,725,721,723],"class_list":["post-556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-5-stars","category-book","tag-47","tag-a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-court","tag-book","tag-michael-lingaard","tag-parallel-universes","tag-review","tag-the-mirror-worlds","tag-the-other-side-of-magik","tag-thor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":732,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}