As the third, and final, novel in her YA fantasy series is published, Justine Larbalestier is interviewed by John Joseph Adams. In the process she mentions the main reason why I find most novels of magic rather hard to take: "Seriously, I was reading this fantasy where every time the main character got into trouble he'd pull out his magic doobalackie and the problem would go away," Larbalestier said in an interview. "It drove me crazy."
Which is also interesting as I'd always pronounced it "doovalackie", with a diminutive of "doova".
