In the second half of the eighth chapter of A Wizard of Mars<\/i>, THIS IS REALLY DARK. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For talk of genocide.<\/b><\/p>\n
WELL, I GOT THAT WRONG. See, I misunderstood where<\/i> these visions of history were coming from. I mean, I get why<\/i>. Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t this history be of Mars itself? However, there was a clue in the first half of this chapter: those orbital maps with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extra\u00e2\u20ac\u009d planets. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear to me now that the unknown planet between Mars and Jupiter was where the First People originated. This whole flashback wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t of Mars at all<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 which makes me want to know why<\/i> it was written about at all.<\/p>\n
I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to assume that the original Martians weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t from Mars at all. It would, at the very least, explain why there never was any evidence of the massive wars described by Carmela here. (I did start to wonder how all that was hidden from non-wizards.) Because seriously, the story we get here is beyond tragic. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s immensely disturbing, perhaps one of the most upsetting things in the whole Young Wizards<\/i> series. Of course, it was unnerving to me because there was an echo of humanity in what Diane Duane has written here. Is it really that hard to imagine that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking about us in these pages? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out of the question to assume that humans can be violent, cruel, and genocidal.<\/p>\n
The people of Eilith and Shamaska, despite having chance after to realize how destructive they were as a whole, fought for tens of thousands of years. THEIR FIRST WAR WAS BETWEEN TWELVE AND THIRTEEN THOUSAND YEARS<\/i> LONG. Yet even when the Sun began to cool off, they didnt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 stop. EVEN WHEN A ROGUE PLANET BASICALLY FLOATED INTO THEIR ORBITAL PATH, THEY STILL FOUGHT. Still!!!! Scientists from both communities knew they had to do something<\/i> to save people from the destruction of their planet, but y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Each side figured that if it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tell the other one, their enemies might not have enough time to evacuate their populations. Then the ones who escaped successfully would have the whole new world to themselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n THIS IS SO FUCKED UP. Duane doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sugarcoat any<\/i> of this, and the same goes for her descriptions of the exodus \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a very tiny one at that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the inevitable destruction of the planet. There was something existentially terrifying about all of this. Maybe it was the horror of knowing that these people still bitterly fought one another so long, or maybe it was that this felt like their destiny, as if the Powers That Be let<\/i> it happen as a punishment for an entire species that allowed the Lone One to thrive for so very long.<\/p>\n This glimpse of the history of the First People left me and the main characters with a lot<\/i> of questions. Did any of those city domes make it to Mars? If not, why was this history recorded on Mars? What if Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory is correct? There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a possibility that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Martians\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were inhabitants of the original world and they killed one another on Mars. OR WHAT IF THEY WERE PURPOSELY HIDDEN\/WIPED OUT SO THAT THEY COULD NEVER REPEAT THIS CYCLE AGAIN? Oh god, what if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a good thing that these wizards may have woken them up again or found them??? I never considered that<\/i> option, but now I have to because of what I know. Granted, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m aware I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even remotely have the full picture, but STILL.<\/p>\n This is so messed up. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M NOT READY.<\/p>\n http:\/\/youtu.be\/yG3mwLsZpbA?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 second half of the eighth chapter of A Wizard of Mars, THIS IS REALLY DARK. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards.<\/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-4278","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\/4278","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=4278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}