Alex Brown Reviews Magic Has No Borders edited by Sona Charaipotra and Samira Ahmed

Magic Has No Borders, Sona Charaipotra & Samira Ahmed, eds. (HarperTeen 978-0-06320-826-1, $19.99. 352pp, hc) May 2023. Cover by Jyotirmayee Patra.

Given how many young adult fiction heavy hit­ters there are in Sona Charaipotra and Samira Ahmed’s new YA fantasy anthology Magic Has No Borders, I came in with high expectations. Fourteen authors, all of whom I’ve read and loved before, coming together to share their South Asian culture and heritage had to be worth reading, right? You better believe it.

Some of my personal favorites here are by Naz Kutub, Preeti Chhibber, and Nafiza Azad. Kutub’s story, “The Hawk’s Reason”, tells of a frustrated prince whose kingdom is being invaded by the Mongols. A prophecy changes the course of his life, delivering him both an unexpected love and great loss. In “Unraveled” by Chhibber, Shweta is taken in by her fiancé’s family after having none of her own. When an enemy of her new family kidnaps her, Shweta is treated like “a taunt, a tool, a thing” even by the people who claimed to love her, forcing her to make a difficult choice. Azad tells a lovely story about a farming family who can do food magic. They use their power to get justice and freedom for a family member treated poorly by her new husband’s family.

There is diversity not just within the collec­tion as a whole but within each individual story. I’d argue that this collection’s greatest strength is its range. We have entries about colonialism, oppression, the diaspora, and resistance blended with every definition of “fantasy” you can think of, all featuring a wide range of identities and South Asian experiences. The first story is from Caribbean author Tracey Baptiste and features a polyamorous queer romance, and it only gets better from there. Of course not every experience or identity makes an appearance, but the editors covered a lot of bases.

Several of the authors use folklore and retellings as the basis for their stories, and they each man­age the adaptation well. Traditions are respected while also being updated for the 21st century or explored from other perspectives. I’m not South Asian and don’t know much about that region’s folklore, religions, or cultures, but I appreciated how open the anthology seemed to outsiders. While it seems to me that the stories in Magic Has No Borders are first and foremost for South Asian readers looking for representation, that doesn’t mean the rest of us won’t find value or interest. The authors told the stories they wanted to tell, and even readers coming in without much of a foundation shouldn’t struggle to figure out what’s going on and the context around the themes.

Another big selling point? The artwork. Jyotir­mayee Patra’s cover is absolutely gorgeous and each story is preceded by a stunning illustration. The artists, Neha Kapil, Cynthia Pau, Chaaya Prabhat, Mira Malhotra, Minali, Neha Shetty, Sibu T.P., and Tara Anand really captured the essence of the authors’ work. I had not expected any illustrations going into this anthology, as they aren’t commonly included, but here they’re impossible to resist.

There have been a spate of short story antholo­gies coming out in young adult fiction the last few years. As someone who has reviewed or read most of them, it’s getting harder and harder to find new ways of saying “this is a strong collection of great stories” but here we are. Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra’s Magic Has No Borders is, in fact, a strong collection of great stories. Get it, read it, love it.

This review and more like it in the September 2023 issue of Locus.

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