In the first half of the seventh chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone<\/i>, Kit and Ponch find Darryl in the strangest of places. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I WAS NOT READY FOR HOW INTENSE THIS WOULD BE. Dreams now seem to be the key to Darryl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worlds\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sort of? Whereas Nita intentionally used her dreaming to contact Darryl and speak with him, Kit does it accidentally. As far as I can tell, that is. I assume that he and Ponch fell asleep after getting back from the methane world, and then somehow ended up in Darryl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s newest creation: the worst jungle of all time. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s here that Kit finally has his first face-to-face interaction with Darryl, and\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 MY BRAIN IS A MESS.<\/p>\n
Duane does a fantastic job rendering this environment so that it can best unnerve the reader. Everything about this jungle just feels\u00c2\u00a0wrong<\/i>. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the evidence of the jungle creatures\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153messy eating habits\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the pervasive humidity, the stench of rot; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the fungi and moss that grows everywhere, including off the creepers; and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the horrific screeching from some unseen thing that gets closer, louder, harsher\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 IT IS A LOT TO DEAL WITH.<\/p>\n
But the mechanics of this dream make it even scarier because for the first time in this series, I truly felt like Kit didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have access to his wizardry, at least not in any traditional sense. He couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t access his otherspace pocket and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the magical leash with him. Yeah, he probably could have done any number of wizardries, but right from the start, this felt\u00c2\u00a0off<\/i>. Limited.\u00c2\u00a0Wrong<\/i>. That wrongness pervades the setting, Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s feelings, the visuals\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s everywhere, like I said, and it made me incredibly nervous. Plus\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 dude, if your wizardry-enchanced dog is telling you to leave because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a bad feeling about everything,\u00c2\u00a0you fucking leave<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Kit doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sort of the whole point. By the halfway point in this chapter,\u00c2\u00a0something<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0has happened to Kit, and I think you can track that right back to that moment where he ignores Ponch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s request to go back home. The Lone One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s power has crept into his heart, hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Why else would he lose motivation? Why else would he make so many foolish mistakes?<\/p>\n
What I most want to talk about, though, is what Darryl tells Kit, because HE SAID SO MUCH IN A VERY SHORT LENGTH OF TIME. LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S DISCUSS.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are still things I have to do here, and in the other here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How\u00c2\u00a0many<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0places has Darryl made??? Countless? Or does he make a new one after the Lone One has been fooled by the previous one?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter whether\u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 He stopped, scowling, as if searching for words: as if something was trying to keep him from finding them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Given what Kit feels at the end of the first half of this chapter, I suspect that Darryl fought the Lone One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence at this moment, and\u00c2\u00a0that\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>was the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153barrier\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he pushed through that Duane refers to. But there are a number of barriers Darryl refers to in this conversation. He insists that he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t leave until he fulfills a promise, then goes on to describe how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d things got for him, when \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it started getting so hard to heart things.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
My guess is that the Silence is Darryl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s version of the Manual\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or something? Or the Powers? Look, they gave him the Oath, so it\u00c2\u00a0has<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to be a manual, right??? I also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a coincidence that as Darryl recites the Oath, Kit more aggressively forgets it and what his purpose as a wizard is. For some reason, Darryl says this:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing, believe me, I get it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really great. But you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re here the wrong way, the dangerous way. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a link. If you stay much longer, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get so the link can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be broken. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll keep getting sucked back into the trap I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve set\u00e2\u20ac\u201c\u00e2\u20ac\u0153<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153trap\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bit wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t surprising; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d known that this was what Darryl did in each of those worlds. But why is visiting in dreams wrong? What does he mean by a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153link\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? A link to the outside world? Does he have to be truly alone in these worlds?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I know you, I know what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re becoming.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
WHAT THE FUCK. HOW DOES DARRYL KNOW PONCH? WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Oh my god, this book is too much.<\/p>\n
vid<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
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\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 first half of the seventh chapter of\u00c2\u00a0A Wizard Alone, Kit and Ponch find Darryl in the strangest of places. 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":[523,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-wizard-alone","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067","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=4067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}