Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede

Eff's father is a seventh son, and Eff's twin brother is a seventh son of a seventh son. But Eff, who had the bad luck to be born first, is a thirteenth child, and therefore unlucky and will someday become evil and malevolent. At least, that's what her relatives say, and they constantly hound her for her supposed evilness while doting on her twin brother.

Eff is already upset about her birth status, but when her uncle Earn tries to have her arrested, it all comes to a head. Her parents, and her twin brother Lan, defend her, but Earn insists that she is merely a bad influence on them. At which point her parents tell him in no uncertain terms to take himself and his attitude away from their house. Her mother tells him that he and his wife can ruin their children by spoiling them one minute and whipping them the next, but she won't stand for them ruining her own children.

Uncle Earn calls her mad, but Eff's father agrees with his wife, and they show Earn the door. Later that week, her parents announce their decision: they will be moving away from their home to a new town much closer to the frontier, where her father will be teaching practical magic at a newly-built college. Eff worries that they are moving because of her, but her parents assure her that they had decided on this move long ago. That it will get them away from the attitudes of Uncle Earn and his wife Janna is only a bonus.

The move to the frontier is a place for Eff to start again, and she soon makes friends with William, son of the other professor of Magic at the college. Will's father seems to think that having magic makes him better than other people, and is somewhat put out that Eff's father doesn't agree, but the two men treat each other well because they are co-workers. Unlike Will, who is taught at home by his father, Eff and her twin brother Lan attend the school in town taught by a woman of Aphrikan descent. In addition to normal book learning, they are eventually also taught about magic

Both Eff and Lan are good at magic, and Eff finds that her teacher can also be her confidant when it comes to her doubts about herself and her magic. But when a trip home for a family wedding is interrupted by Eff and Lan's older sister running off to marry a man named Brant who is a Rationalist- and opposed to using magic, Eff is once again blamed by Earn for the problem and for her other sister's still wanting to go through with her own wedding even after the scandal is exposed. Eff, pushed to the point of breaking, finds her magic responding to her anger and flowing out against Earn. But scared by the thought of what could happen, she manages to pull it back at the last minute.

This leads to another problem. After that incident, Eff finds that her magic is no longer working right. But even when she pushes on regardless, she seems to drain the magic of everyone around her. Only Aphrikan magic seems to be unaffected, and so she concentrates on that. But when a catastrophe of epic proportions begins to devastate the outer settlements, grubs that eat up the crops, and bugs that drain the magics from the protections that surround the settlements, it will be up to Eff, not Lan, to save the colonists at the settlements and take care of the problem once and for all.

But is it nature, or her own cursed status that caused the problem? And will Eff finally be able to confess to her friends why she is so ready to take the blame for any problem that happens around her? Is her thirteenth child status real or only a bugaboo for closed minds? Can a thirteenth child be both good and a hero?

Patricia C. Wrede is another writer who has no problem sucking me into a story. I saw this book at the library and opened to the first page to check it out. A few minutes later, I was deep into a first chapter and wanting to know more. Much more. She takes the "problem" of Eff, a thirteenth child in a family of 14 children, and sets her own relatives, save for her immediate family, against her. They are sure that she will turn twisted and evil, but their constant censure and stating of this "fact" is out to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Only by getting away from them is she finally allowed to grow. And her teacher brings a new perspective on herself, magic and the world, but can Eff learn to apply it to her problem of being a thirteenth child, or will she always carry a feeling of shame over the simple matter of when she was born? And if she ever does step out from behind that shame, how will her brother Lan, the natural magician who can seem to do no wrong, react to her sudden lifting to heroine status?

This book is wonderful, and it looks to be like the first in a series, which I hope is so, because the story and characters are too good to end so soon and where it did. I want more, and while I'm not going to badger Ms. Wrede, all I can do is my best impression of Oliver Twist. "Please, ma'am. May I have some more?" This book reminds me of the best works of her younger days, the Dragons books, with the added icing of better, more mature writing. Okay, yes, and less silliness because this book isn't a parody. Highly recommended.