In the third and final part of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not On My Patch,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the wizards fight to save Halloween. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gods, do I ever love Halloween.<\/p>\n
Throughout the Young Wizards<\/i> books, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Diane Duane has ever had her characters face an antagonist or a threat that felt traditional. Even if the Lone Power represents the manifestation of Evil or Wrongness within the universe, It still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite match up to what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expect from a fantasy series, certainly not one with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wizards\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the title. Thus far, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had books dealing with:<\/p>\n And so on. The point I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to make is that there isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t much in these books that feels traditional to fantasy. Or even science fiction, for that matter! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what has made this such a rewarding experience. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never read anything like Young Wizards<\/i>. This is not a set-up to say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m disappointed because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not On My Patch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d deals with a more common fantasy\/horror trope, but rather to CELEBRATE it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so cool that Duane found a way to make zombies a reality within this series. Of course, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s with a Young Wizards<\/i> twist, so let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all scream about this:<\/p>\n Yangshi<\/i> needed living creatures\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 life force to survive, and they got it by prolonged physical contact, during which they sought to bight or wound the victim. If one of them had time to get so much as a tooth into you, that would be the end of it all. Might be quick<\/i>, Nita thought or might take a long time<\/i>.<\/p>\n But let the wound be as little as a snakebite, or as big as a whole leg pulled off, it wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter. Every sentient thing came equipped with an invisible barrier layer that kept its soul bound inside its physical structure. The yangshi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s<\/i> bite would open up a wound in the boundary layer that couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be healed and would only tear wider with time. Inevitably the soul would leak out, and when the body no longer contained the threshold amount of soulstuff necessary to sustain the body\/soul matrix, the spirit would go and the body would die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This might feel like an understatement, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably the most cruel thing<\/i> in this whole universe, and it is exactly<\/i> the sort of thing that the Lone One would create. Not just create, mind you, but set upon the world on the night of Halloween, when humanity\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beliefs are that<\/i> much closer to reality. On a world that still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know of wizardry, stuff like this is a million times worse, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? How would non-wizards even be able to fight something like this, you know?<\/p>\n So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up to our resident young wizards to take these zombies on, and LO AND BEHOLD, THERE IS A CATCH: They cannot be torn into any sort of piece, because that<\/i> piece, even if broken off from the original, forms an entirely new<\/i> zombie. It is a totally evil conceit, but this complication allows Nita to think of something that is the polar opposite. Intent and belief plays a huge part in the mechanics of wizardry, and I assume that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why Duane uses the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153intent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in numerous ways throughout the spell constructions in Young Wizards<\/i>. That is precisely what Nita taps into, using Jackie the pumpkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s glorious intent to be the biggest pumpkin, full of the most sun, to vaporize all the zombies at once. The sequence is absurd and over-the-top, but it should<\/i> be. It wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work otherwise, especially because this is the best moment in the whole story:<\/p>\n To Jackie she said silently, Are you absolutely sure you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re up for this?<\/i><\/p>\n Up for this? I was <\/i>grown for this!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n HELP ME, EMOTIONS FOR A SENTIENT PUMPKIN. Actually, I lied, this might be the best part:<\/p>\n Thank you<\/i>, Jackie said, for picking me.<\/i><\/p>\n And it faded gently away into the dark, and was gone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nothing like fiction to make you want to cry over a pumpkin, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Not just that, but KIT AND NITA BEING CUTE. Oh my god, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re really dating! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s canon! HOW ARE WE SO LUCKY.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/vOffvoerSZA<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the third and final part of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Not On My Patch,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the wizards fight to save Halloween. 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":[534,510],"tags":[513,511,535],"class_list":["post-4322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interim-errantry","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards","tag-not-on-my-patch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4322","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=4322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n