In the eighteenth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0The Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma<\/i>, I AM PAIN. PAIN IS ME. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for me to brace myself for the inevitable.<\/p>\n
Nita<\/b><\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a dread in this book that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s undeniable. Palpable. So real and scary that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to describe it as well as Duane does here unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve\u00c2\u00a0been<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0through this experience. Getting up and knowing the day has arrived. Preparing yourself for the worst, trying to hope for the best. The way you talk to others like you never want to talk again. Forcing yourself to interact out of necessity, not desire.<\/p>\n
I was full of nervous energy and fear because of the opening scene of this chapter. It felt dire when Nita sent Dairine off. It felt\u00c2\u00a0final<\/i>. How could I possibly hope for success when Nita herself didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to believe that she would do it? She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d already resigned herself to failure, to giving up her wizardry to save her mother.<\/p>\n
I WAS SCARED.<\/p>\n
Kit<\/b><\/p>\n
And then I was shocked because I expected that Duane would focus entirely on Nita in this chapter. Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she? Nita was about to enter the internal universe of her mother to try and convince her cancer to stop doing what it was meant to do. But the switch over to Kit is\u00c2\u00a0brilliant<\/i>, a chance for Duane to give us a break of sorts while also bringing his story in line with Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plot. Like Kit, I panicked once I realized that Nita had left without him. She was isolating herself again, and it was never more clear that the Lone One had been influencing her.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ponch, though, who acts as the wild card here, and I love it!!! PONCH IS SUCH A GOOD DOG. As I said in on video, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been wondering how the universe-creating space was going to tie in to the main plot, and here we are: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how Ponch leads Kit to the waiting room universe. Now, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a perfect solution, and I was thrilled that Duane did not make it so. Yes, Ponch was able to get Kit\u00c2\u00a0very<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0close to Nita, but it made a lot of sense to me that all the aliens there would be hyper suspicious of Kit. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s someone none of them have ever met, asking after someone on a very intense mission. Had the others already figured out that the Lone One had a hand in this??? Okay, maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bit much, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the\u00c2\u00a0worst<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0theory.<\/p>\n
Regardless, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about Dazel, because WHAT.<\/p>\n
The Sulamid bowed once again, if a bow was what it was. It was not directed at Kit but at Ponch. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pathfinder, seer for the seer in the dark,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said the Sulamid, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tracker in the night-places:\u00c2\u00a0wait<\/i>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WHAT. NO. COME BACK. STOP DOING THIS. Wait\u00c2\u00a0where<\/i>? Was Dazel telling Ponch (and, therefore, Kit) to\u00c2\u00a0not<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0intervene??? I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW.<\/p>\n
This was suitably odd, but it paled in comparison to Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversation with the Transcendent Pig. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a compelling contrast between the Pig and the Lone One, and you could compare Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversation with the Pig and Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversation with the Lone One, and you would have a FIELD DAY with the metaphysical implications of what they said. Here, Kit uses a combination of curiosity and cunning to get what he wants out of the Pig, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about the\u00c2\u00a0easiest<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0way to summarize what actually happens. Truthfully, this is a complicated scene full of meaning for Kit and the series as a whole. We get a sense that even in an existence full of wizardry, which can \u00e2\u20ac\u0153explain\u00e2\u20ac\u009d virtually anything, there are still unknowns. Like the Pig.<\/p>\n
Yet at the same time, the Pig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s omnipresence makes it a bizarre character. If the Pig is everywhere at once, can it have a limit to it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s knowledge? Initially, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so, but Kit proved me wrong. In order to get the information on Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whereabouts, he provides three truths to the Pig, and one of them actually surprises it:<\/p>\n
He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My dog makes alternate universes, ones that no one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ever seen before. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re new.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even the biggest revelation! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the glede \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that weird speck of light that Kit found in the darkness \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that provides perhaps the most important moment. Is that thing a\u00c2\u00a0soul<\/i>? For what? A universe? A being? WHAT IS IT?<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m holding out hope that Duane will bring it up again before the end of the book. She moves beyond it, though, to give us the Pig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truth. Which, I should note, KIT IMMEDIATELY QUESTIONS. Oh my gods, I love Kit, I love how fearless he can be. But he questions the Pig for a reason: How can the Pig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truth be fair if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s full of things he already knew? And how is it fair that the Pig never warned Nita of the Lone One?<\/p>\n
I think this is the key:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more important is that the way she deals with the realization, when she comes up with it herself, is likely to be crucial to what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s working on.\u00c2\u00a0That<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t interfere with, even if I could.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I say that because of what comes next.<\/p>\n
Nita Again<\/b><\/p>\n
When Duane flips back to Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s POV, she brings us to a dark place. Literally! The visual imagery Duane employs in the final scene of this chapter is haunting. Disturbing. Distressing. How would cancer look in a body if you translated that to downtown Manhattan? I was reminded of the images I saw on the news (and in the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, which you should go to!) after Hurricane Sandy: of Metro stations flooded with dark, swirling water. Of destruction. Of jagged buildings barely standing. Even further, the cancer is represented in the horrifying malignant blobs that live in the water, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s through that that Duane demonstrates to the reader just how insidious and impossible this task is. Getting rid of all the malignancies is impossible enough, but convincing them all\u00c2\u00a0not<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to do what they do? How??? How is she ever going to do that?<\/p>\n
The bleak wind blew over the gray waters, and Nita walked on through it all, with Pralaya swimming beside her, and knew true desperation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s colors at last.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS BOOK<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=afM4iCQJFfg<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b>
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the eighteenth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0The Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dilemma, I AM PAIN. PAIN IS ME. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[520,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-wizards-dilemma","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}