{"id":4561,"date":"2018-06-04T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4561"},"modified":"2018-06-04T04:50:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T11:50:35","slug":"mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-3-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/06\/mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-3-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8220;On Ordeal: Ronan&#8221; &#8211; Chapter 3, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first part of the third chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ronan discovers that his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d life isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to be normal for a long, long time. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Young Wizards<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>Trigger Warning: For talk of anxiety<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m remembering Nina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own introduction to wizardry long ago (I FEEL LIKE I STARTED THIS SERIES A BILLION YEARS AGO), and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it was quite like the flood that Ronan experiences here. Which makes sense! Wizardry looks differently to everyone, you know? And in Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a little older than most of the other young wizards who were granted wizardry, and his predicament is so vastly different. I would like to propose a theory: Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anxiety absolutely affected how wizardry appeared to him.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind is different, okay, and wizardry is deeply specific. On top of that, it appears to Roland amidst a particularly tense day while he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hiding from the dread and existential torment of his life. As someone with LOTS of anxiety, I know how it can feel like there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a flood in the mind, a torrent that spreads to all parts of the body as my brain obsesses over all the terrible possibilities that won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually happen, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve convinced myself <i>will<\/i> happen. So this felt like a fitting analogue for the experience, just transferred to wizardry. When Ronan looks at anything, he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t slowly begin to understand that thing through wizardry. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a DELUGE of information that pummels him. That happens with the cold virus; when he watches television; and especially when he turns on the sink in the bathroom:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;he went off to the loo\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand got the shock of his life when he turned on the faucet to get a glass of water first, and the stream form the cold water faucet immediately started shouting <i>Water water water cold hard wiggly tubes pressure (Navier-Stokes equations) exciting wheee!<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Okay, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a <i>little<\/i> funny, but goddamn, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also so <i>overwhelming<\/i>. He is inundated with information, and it never, never stops coming. I imagine that this is just part of the initial experience. The <i>second<\/i> time this happens, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be as loud. Over time, Ronan is going to learn how to train himself to control information. But right now, this is a <i>lot<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no wonder his first night of sleep is so fitful and restless! His mind is moving at a million miles per hour as it struggles to take in all this information, which was probably <i>still<\/i> flooding in while he was unconscious, too. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M TIRED JUST THINKING OF THIS! I say that because I often have really terrible sleep if I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try to clear my mind before bed. I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even imagine how bad of a time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have it if I was experiencing a flood of info like this, you know?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the temptation. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all are free to laugh at me comparing this to an angel and devil sitting on Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shoulder mere seconds from the text actually saying the same exact thing. (WHY DO I DO THIS SO OFTEN.) I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not used to Powers <i>actively<\/i> participating in the story as much as the Lone One and the One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Champion do here, but I am <i>not<\/i> complaining. It adds tension to the story because they keep hinting at where this is going. In this case, though, Ronan braces himself for the eventual moment when his father gets the letter from school that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been suspended\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come. And Ronan <i>wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> the one that made it disappear! (Oh god, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually tell who is who in that one scene break. I <i>think<\/i> the Champion is responsible for it, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure.) So, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free from the inevitable event he was certain would happen, and you can tell that he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know what to do with his day, since he assumed he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to deal with his parents.<\/p>\n<p>But this is an interesting twist for a different reason: It forces Ronan to actively think about his next step, and suspicion starts creeping in. He suddenly can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore this feeling that he <i>is<\/i> supposed to be doing something important, something that has nothing to do with his suspension. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. HIS ORDEAL IS IMMINENT, I FEEL IT DEEPLY AND TRULY.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/gMazBPbucbw<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2017\/9\/22\/i-am-proud-to-announce-my-ya-contemporary-debut-anger-is-a-gift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first part of the third chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ronan discovers that his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d life isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to be normal for a long, long time. 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":[542,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interim-errantry-2","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561","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=4561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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