In the thirteenth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holiday<\/i>, HELP. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of claustrophobia<\/b>.<\/p>\n
I fell for it. Hard.<\/p>\n
The Descent<\/b><\/p>\n
I feel like it happens once a book, but Diane Duane gets in her\u00c2\u00a0zone<\/i>, and I feel honored that I get to experience it. The prose in this chapter, particularly as Nita and Kit follow Esemeli down to Druvah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hiding place, is astounding. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one thing to be able to describe something, which Duane does well, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another thing when she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s able to transport us somewhere. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the great things about writing, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Granted, I had some limited experience with being beneath the Earth, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have fully appreciated this without Duane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words.<\/p>\n
Back in 2013, I traveled to San Antonio for the first time in my life for Worldcon, and during the downtime, my partner at the time and I made it out to the Natural Bridge Caverns. As far as tourist attractions go, it was pretty spectacular. I had always liked the\u00c2\u00a0idea<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0of exploring a network of caves, so I very excitedly agreed to the expedition when my ex suggested it. There are warnings on the way in and from some of the staff about claustrophobia, but since I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d only experienced it in crowds, I figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be okay.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, I was, but y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I was not ready. I recall having to take an elevator down to the start of the tour, and our guide told us this was the only way in and out of the cavern. To be honest, I think that was the exact moment my anxiety-riddled brain went, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hold on.\u00c2\u00a0What<\/i>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A burst of nerves rushed through me as the elevator creaked and groaned its way down the shaft, and when I stepped out \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the air strangely warmer than I expected \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it felt like someone was sitting on top of my head and shoulders.<\/p>\n
The guide immediately said there were tons of rock above me and MY BRAIN LOST IT. I managed to get ahold of myself rather quickly by taking a break to breathe and focus instead on the sheer beauty of that space. Thankfully, we popped into a huge cavern fairly soon after that first passageway, and it alleviated a lot of the sensation. But until that point, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never experienced that! I know that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why it affected me as much as it did; I had no coping mechanism for the sensation. Duane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prose took me right back to that moment, and I was able to immerse myself in this surreal journey completely.<\/p>\n
And what a weird thing this is. I know that when I recommend these books to others, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be a part of my flailing: they are surreal as hell at times, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a constantly-rewarding thing to experience. Duane invokes the imagery of descending into a Underworld here, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a beautifully intentional thing. It put me in the right headspace to appreciate this, and then, within a few pages, she destroyed my expectations by making things\u00c2\u00a0even weirder<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I believe this is the first time she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talked about complex spaces in the\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0series, but y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, the sheer potential of this is ridiculous to me. I want to see another one! Here, the complex-space is used to create a world that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mixture of reality and myth. Druvah is such a talented wizard that he might just be one of the\u00c2\u00a0most<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0powerful and clever wizards we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen, and this whole cavern is proof of that. He constructed a cave meant to mimic the very journey that he went through when creating this place, thus providing any wizard seeking him out a chance to think\u00c2\u00a0very<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0seriously about what they were about to ask of him.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brilliant. Scary, even! And as these wizards descended into the unknown while following the Lone One to Druvah, I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help the dread I felt. Part of that comes from the physicality of the place, and again, props to Duane for that. Yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also because of six and a half books worth of characterization, too! This is the seventh iteration of the Lone One we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s by far the strangest. Kit and Nita\u00c2\u00a0willingly<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0followed It down to\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what? They had no idea what they were going to find, and the looming unknown is FUCKING TERRIFYING.<\/p>\n
However, once the place began to change into something else\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 oh, I was both frightened and exhilarated. BRING ON THE WEIRD. The gravity changed, first of all, which made no sense to me, BUT LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TALK ABOUT THE REVEAL OF THE FINAL CAVERN. Like the first time Kit and Nita came to Alaalid, perspective is used to FUCK EVERYTHING UP. The place was\u00c2\u00a0impossibly<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0big, a sign that it was a complex space, and by inverting the sky and the land, the decreasing gravity suddenly had a new meaning. They had not been experiencing a reduction in gravity; it had merely shifted positions.<\/p>\n
They fall up. UP. The whole experience is meant to take any wizard and\u00c2\u00a0literally<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0flip them about, and I am sure Druvah constructed it that way for a metaphorical meaning, too. The cave passage had been built that way, hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the rest? I say this because I feel like every bit of this chapter was one giant warning to Nita that she needed to flip her perspective, to think of things as Druvah or the Lone One would think of them. They traveled along a path that seemed impossible to return along, and\u00c2\u00a0that was the point.\u00c2\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re finished talking to you\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 how do we get out of here?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No one does that,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Druvah said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153until we change the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And this space that Druvah constructed to hide in is evidence of how Alaalu got their choice wrong. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more or less an Underworld, except every Alaalid\u00c2\u00a0ever<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0is there, unchanged, unmoving, unmotivated. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where the Whispers came from, and, as far as I can see, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where Nita and Kit are stuck\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 unless they can \u00e2\u20ac\u0153change\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the world. But without Quelt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who refused to even talk to Nita and Kit that morning \u00e2\u20ac\u201c how the hell are they going to do this?<\/p>\n Guarantor<\/b><\/p>\n Diane Duane had to ruin me\u00c2\u00a0twice<\/i>, didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she?<\/p>\n I adore that this book switches between the fantastical journey of Nita and Kit to a horrifying underworld nightmare right to Dairine and her friends HANGING OUT JUST OUTSIDE THE SUN. That genre-bending confidence is so fulfilling to me because Duane cares more about creating a wonderful story rather than worry about what genre it ends up in. Plus, I love the contrast she achieves by having this conflict end at the sun. What had these wizards done the night before? Appreciate the Moon. I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say they are polar opposites; indeed, part of the beauty of the moon is the way it looks due to the sun reflecting off of it. But we got from silence to violence, and the scenes\u00c2\u00a0inside<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0of our sun are unreal. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just as weird as the underworld sequence, AND THIS IS HALL HAPPENING IN THE SAME CHAPTER.<\/p>\n Yet I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure that the Lone One would fuck things up for Dairine, too, but HERE WE ARE.<\/p>\n There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something wrong here<\/i>, she heard Sker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ret saying in her mind.\u00c2\u00a0Something interfering with the magnetic flow at this level<\/i>.<\/p>\n The bubblestorm area?<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0Dairine asked.<\/p>\n No. A darkness<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n IS THE LONE ONE LIVING IN THE SUN, TOO. Is It paying rent??? Because if not, RUDE.<\/p>\n And I should have seen the twist at the end coming. Roshaun had explained in great detail how he and his family were the Guarantors, the ones expected to deal with stars and suns because of their unique wizardry specializations. I should have known that he would take it upon himself to solve this. Still, the image of him plunging deeper into the sun while Diarine screams in anguish is NOT AT ALL FAIR.<\/p>\n What the fuck is this book, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n I am thrilled to confirm that I will be a Guest at CrossingsCon 2017! Badges are now available, so COME HANG OUT WITH ME THIS SUMMER<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n http:\/\/youtu.be\/SUQ0G3531q0?a<\/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> In the thirteenth chapter of\u00c2\u00a0Wizard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Holiday, HELP. 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":[525,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wizards-holiday","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","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=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\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":"