Read Amari and the Night Brothers.
Sep. 6th, 2021 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyIt's not a bad book, a bit standard but still competent, but I could have thrown my phone across the room at the ending.
So we've got a fairly typical set-up - ordinary (Black) girl (living in the projects) suddenly gets whisked away to a magicalschool summer camp and a whole magical world existing right alongside the world she thought she knew, whereupon she immediately finds out that she's a. super more powerful than everybody else and b. highly illegal because instead of having just one boosted magical talent she's a full-on magician and everybody knows all the magicians are very evil, and unless you're born one (amazingly rare) the only way to become one is to apprentice to a magician. Who is, of course, evil. (They all seem to think that the magic makes humans evil, though honestly, none of them seem to consider that anybody who is deliberately seeking out an evil magician to apprentice themselves to and gain magical power from is probably evil from the get-go. Literally nobody ever points out the logical error here, including Amari, who you'd think would have a vested interest in both seeing and commenting on the flaws in this reasoning.)
She also wants to find out why her brother disappeared. Also, there's an evil plot by an evil magician.
You're going to say this reminds you of a certain book series, and yeah, but actually I'm more put in mind of the more recent Nevermoor books, which hit all the same beats except anything that touches on real world issues of race and/or class.
Not long into her adventure she starts getting texts from a mysterious other magician who names herself "Magicgirl" (or something like that) and it turns out to be her campmate Dylan who is a boy and tells her all about how some good magicians exist in secret but he can't even tell anybody in his family (except his disappeared sister, Amari's brother's secret agent partner, who is also a magician) and I really wanted his other secret to be that he really was a girl but no, it became increasingly obvious that his secret must be that he was actually working with the main villain. When no other villain presents itself, it must be the best friend.
And this is where I got pissed. After the older siblings are rescued and the main villain is dispatched (by our baby villain Dylan), Amari confesses to his older sister that she misses the Dylan she thought she knew and she says she does too, but he's safely imprisoned where he can't hurt anybody or get out.
Not that Dylan should be allowed to just roam free given his abilities and apparent murderous inclinations, but he is Amari's age, which puts him between 12 and 14 years old. We're told that he started talking to the big bad about two years ago, which means he was between 10 and 12 years when Mr. Master Manipulator started working on him. And this was after an entire childhood where he had to keep the most important thing about himself super secret from everybody except two people (one of whom, again, was the villain), including his parents and his twin and everybody who called themselves his friends, all while listening to them rant and rave about how evil all villains really are. During the course of the book he got to witness several charming examples of bigotry against Amari, who couldn't hide, including his own father trying blatantly to bend the rules to toss her out at every turn.
His stated complaint of "I just don't want to be alone" is a weak defense for attempted fratricide and fascism, but it sure is sympathetic.
I'd rather he'd just been trans. What do you want to bet nobody visits him in juvie in later installments?
So we've got a fairly typical set-up - ordinary (Black) girl (living in the projects) suddenly gets whisked away to a magical
She also wants to find out why her brother disappeared. Also, there's an evil plot by an evil magician.
You're going to say this reminds you of a certain book series, and yeah, but actually I'm more put in mind of the more recent Nevermoor books, which hit all the same beats except anything that touches on real world issues of race and/or class.
Not long into her adventure she starts getting texts from a mysterious other magician who names herself "Magicgirl" (or something like that) and it turns out to be her campmate Dylan who is a boy and tells her all about how some good magicians exist in secret but he can't even tell anybody in his family (except his disappeared sister, Amari's brother's secret agent partner, who is also a magician) and I really wanted his other secret to be that he really was a girl but no, it became increasingly obvious that his secret must be that he was actually working with the main villain. When no other villain presents itself, it must be the best friend.
And this is where I got pissed. After the older siblings are rescued and the main villain is dispatched (by our baby villain Dylan), Amari confesses to his older sister that she misses the Dylan she thought she knew and she says she does too, but he's safely imprisoned where he can't hurt anybody or get out.
Not that Dylan should be allowed to just roam free given his abilities and apparent murderous inclinations, but he is Amari's age, which puts him between 12 and 14 years old. We're told that he started talking to the big bad about two years ago, which means he was between 10 and 12 years when Mr. Master Manipulator started working on him. And this was after an entire childhood where he had to keep the most important thing about himself super secret from everybody except two people (one of whom, again, was the villain), including his parents and his twin and everybody who called themselves his friends, all while listening to them rant and rave about how evil all villains really are. During the course of the book he got to witness several charming examples of bigotry against Amari, who couldn't hide, including his own father trying blatantly to bend the rules to toss her out at every turn.
His stated complaint of "I just don't want to be alone" is a weak defense for attempted fratricide and fascism, but it sure is sympathetic.
I'd rather he'd just been trans. What do you want to bet nobody visits him in juvie in later installments?
no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-06 09:43 pm (UTC)Or, if the author really couldn't think of a better villain, he could honestly get cold feet by the end rather than sorta getting cold feet but then getting cold feet on his cold feet and going full on fascist "might makes right".