In the first chapter of A Wizard of Mars<\/i>, Kit looks forward to the start of summer vacation. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is so deliberately normal<\/i> that it scares me.<\/p>\n
Normal is, of course, quite relative. For those of us who went to schools like this, we all know the restless anxiety that settles in our bones as the school year winds down. I know the suffering that comes from attending a school with budget problems and the terror of not having air conditioning. I am also learning over the past month just how oppressive humidity is, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to punch the person who invented it right in the face<\/i>. Duane writes with familiarity in this first chapter, and that applies to the wizardry, too! Relative to his classmates, Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wizardry might not be normal, but it is to the reader. His use of wizardry is gentle and recognizable, and it had honestly been so long since we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen such a simple bit of magic that I felt calmed<\/i> by it.<\/p>\n
So why open A Wizard of Mars<\/i> this way? After the traumatic events of Wizards at War<\/i>, I found this to be a fascinating way to ease the reader back into this world. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the end of the school year, Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worried about his grades, and we know why<\/i> he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concerned. Given what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happened in the past semester alone<\/i> was enough to overwhelm anyone, and yet, Kit still buckled down and got it done. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s through this that we meet who I think <\/i>is the first non-wizardly friend of Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s: Raoul. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the person Kit ended up studying with the most after his grades started to slip, and I appreciated that Duane gave us this slice of Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life. Yes, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very<\/i> interested in why Mars is important to this book, but Duane grounds Kit in the non-wizard world so firmly here, reminding us that he has to live amidst people who will never know who he really is or what he really does.<\/p>\n
Again, though, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like Duane forgets that Kit is a wizard, and he does his daily good deed by convincing the broken air conditioning system to work again. (I still love that wizardry works through consent and permission, by the way.) We also learn that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got a camouflage spell on his manual so that he can pull it out in class and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll look like an everyday textbook. I AM JEALOUS.<\/p>\n
So, what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious about aside from that message in Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s manual at the end of the chapter: What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the deal with Mr. Mack? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually believe that he is going to play a part in the novel, but I suspect that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reason it was so important for Duane to write about Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (possible) blooming into a history nerd. It felt<\/i> important, but of course, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at the very start of A Wizard of Mars<\/i>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m grasping at any little detail here. Maybe the whole light\/dark bit? Maybe the bottle message is more important? MAYBE I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW WHAT I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M TALKING ABOUT.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably it.<\/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\/ltjBQNaDojk?a<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n -\u00c2\u00a0Please visit my new site for all announcements<\/a>. If you’d rather not have to rely on checking a website regularly, sign up for my newsletter instead<\/a>! This will cover all news for Mark Reads, Mark Watches, and my fiction releases.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the first chapter of A Wizard of Mars, Kit looks forward to the start of summer vacation. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young 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":[530,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-wizard-of-mars","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4239","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=4239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}