Enhanced Algebra

Thanks to The Guardian 

Title: Enhanced Algebra 

Author: Not known 

Publisher: Not known 

Source book: Shadows by Robin McKinley

There are numerous algebra textbooks all around the world, some of them called things like Algebra for the Utterly Confused, The Humongous Book of Algebra Problems or The Bedside Book of Algebra: Sheep Counting for Smarty-Pants, but none will be quite like this particular volume of Enhanced Algebra.

Maggie hates Maths. She can’t get her head around Algebra or Geometry and her Maths teacher despises her. Her best friends Jill and Takahiro will be studying Calculus this year but she is condemned to Enhanced Algebra with its huge, heavy, square textbook that won’t fit in her backpack.

But [major spoiler alert] Maggie soon finds she has bigger problems than being bad at Maths. Her mother has married Val, a man who seems to be surrounded by creepy writhing shadows, Jill is having strange forebodings, and Takahiro, the boy who taught her origami, turns out to be a werewolf. 

Then Maggie discovers that Val is an exile from his homeland where he used to be a magician, and the shadows are magical creatures called gruuaa which attach themselves to people they like. Suddenly there are numerous sightings of silverbugs which you must report to the authorities at once, and there’s a cobey. And another. 

We don’t really know what cobeys are, but they are some kind of dangerous magical rift (I think). The authoritarian military government has tried for several generations to eradicate all signs of magic, and to imprison or genesplice anyone who shows signs of being a magician. The trouble is, the army’s equipment cannot control cobeys and seems to exacerbate them. When Maggie and her new friend Casimir are suddenly threatened by a cobey in the park, Maggie tears pages from Enhanced Algebra and folds origami magic to close the rift and save them. 

Maggie is horrified at how many pages she has torn from the book and whimsically folds an origami “bandage” to heal it using decorative paper given to her by Jill. Next day the missing pages seem to have reappeared, only they seem to be the same colours and have the same patterns as Jill’s paper. The book starts following her around. It escapes from her locker to sit next to her, and somehow seems to catch up with her wherever she goes. 

When Val is arrested, Maggie and her friends set out to rescue him together with the gruuaa, Enhanced Algebra and numerous animals from the rescue centre where Maggie works part time. And, for no reason at all, there’s an eccentric sheep.

Thanks to 123RF