Magica Riot by Kara Buchanan is brilliant trans joy. It’s a charming delight filled with appreciation of music and of queer women. If you’re down about what is going on in the world and need a break, I highly recommend it.
The book tells the story of Claire, a shy geek who plays keyboards to herself and has a secret crush on her best friend. She never thought she would be able to allow herself to be the woman she knows she is:
I had, of course, thought about what name I’d pick if I ever came out, but since I’d convinced myself I wasn’t good enough to actually do so, I’d never told anybody. Not even Hazel, and she was my best friend. I’d always thought it was something I’d live with in secret for the rest of my life. A dream in the form of a cloud of vapor that would dissipate if I reached for it.
Nevertheless, Claire has an exciting evening in which she happens to chat with Nova, a member of Claire’s favorite local rock band, Magica Riot. Not only that, but Nova tells Claire she has “the heart of a maiden,” perhaps recognizing Claire’s true self. After the show, in a dark street, Claire and Nova find themselves facing an attack by monstrous beings. Nova turns out to be a magical girl, but she can’t handle them all alone. Suddenly, a powerful magical harmony calls upon Claire to become who she is, a magical girl, and Claire joins Nova in fighting the monsters.
It turns out Magica Riot are “the guardians of song and heart, a magical girl band protecting the innocent through the power of music and kindness.” They ask Claire to join them as a magical girl, and also as their keytar player. This transformation into a magical girl is all the more potent in that it allows Claire to be herself as a woman:
Somewhere inside me, a voice screamed for me to accept, to change my world and jump in with both feet. All I had to do was say yes, and my life would be altered forever. And I realized with surprise that all the years of who I had been, the entirety of what I’d called a life, only barely stacked up to equal this new voice.
Needless to say, Claire experiences magical girl training, goes undercover, discovers herself as a woman, finds family, and falls in love. In the course of all this, the novel tells an adorable sapphic love story between Claire and another woman. The story never feels as if it is written for outsiders, not even well-meaning ones. It is not about explaining our lives for the benefit of cis or straight people. It is there to tell trans people a story about characters like us. The excitement and vulnerability of first steps. The way sapphics often revere our love interests. The joy of being girlie and shiny and having purple hair. This is a trans and sapphic love story, for the benefit of trans and sapphic people.
While the novel is lighthearted, it does not shy away from some more serious realities, mostly of queer lives. Notably, one of the characters, Nova, was kicked out of her home by her transphobic father. She met the band members when she was living in the woods, with a stray cat named Nebula, whom she had adopted. Those of us who have been kicked out by family might appreciate this representation. It sidesteps cliches and speaks about it plainly. It doesn’t depict Nova as tragic or inspirational for people who have not been kicked out. She is depicted as a person. Magica Riot is also not about forcing trans people into harmful reunions with family that hurt them. The horrible father is left in the past, and his daughter has her own found family in her bandmates. She declares: “If you ask me, I say family’s a thing you pick, like how you pick the way you wanna be seen, y’know? It don’t matter what your blood says. I got the me I wanted, and I got the family I wanted, right here!”
The author also takes on familiar magical girl tropes, and no-prizes them to have them make logical sense. For example, she explains the band is always running off mid-show to fight monsters, and indeed it gets them in trouble with the owner of the venue. She has also explained on her Bluesky account the transformation sequence at the start of every battle. “Why don’t monsters attack while magical girls go through their lengthy transformation?” she asks—and explains that the transformation takes place in a different space-time continuum, so it is impossible for the monsters to harm magical girls as they transform.
Magica Riot is the first installment in a series, though it can be read as a stand-alone. The author explains on her Bluesky account that she is treating it as a pilot episode after which the series will start in earnest. I very much look forward to the next novel, which the author assures us is being written right now. This first novel also tells a bittersweet story about lost love that might not be so lost after all—so I’m really keen to find out more about it in the next installment. (Without giving too much away, I also really want to find out what happens with the book’s interesting villain.)
That said, and while the novel is fairly diverse, I hope the next installment brings us even more diversity. I would love to learn more about the BIPOC and nonbinary cuties we encounter. It would also be a genuine joy to read about queer magical girls who are disabled, fat, older, late bloomers, and so on.
Taken as a stand-alone only, however, the novel is plenty sensory and fun on its own terms. It feels like reading comics or watching anime, with pretty colors and a great soundtrack. It is well-paced, and while it tells many small stories, the plot is clear and punchy, and does not meander. It is tight and well thought-out. The book’s cover features a gorgeous and adorable drawing by Amber Dill, which adds just the right flavor to the experience of reading. In sum, the whole book is an ode—or rather, a pop-punk rock-bop—to the power, togetherness, and happiness of girls and women everywhere. It bursts with hope so much that it made me tear up.
Magica Riot is in other words a book that needed to be written. I want to give a copy to every trans woman I love. This is not to say this is a book for trans people only. It’s a good book for girls and women of different ages, for anyone who loves women, anyone who is a feminist, anyone who loves music. As the book passionately declares: “Why shouldn’t girls—of all kinds, however they got to be girls—get to be exactly who they wanted to be? Why shouldn’t they live free and happy without society cutting them down? I believed that, as strongly as I ever believed anything. I wanted to fight for them.”