{"id":4565,"date":"2018-06-08T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4565"},"modified":"2018-06-05T18:30:52","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T01:30:52","slug":"mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-3-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/06\/mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-3-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8220;On Ordeal: Ronan&#8221;: Chapter 3, Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the third part of the third chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ordeal pits him against a violent force. 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 brief mention of slavery<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ordeal is fascinating to examine in contrast with the others that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten so far. In some ways, the Lone Power has repetitive techniques. It loves to pull people from the comfort zones, but It often does so by twisting those comfort zones and making them feel <i>wrong<\/i>. In that sense, his Ordeal is a parallel to Nita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Kit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, since they are sent to an alternate Manhattan, a fucked up version of their own. Ancient Bray is the setting for Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ordeal, but the familiarity is not enough to overcome that sense of <i>wrongness<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But I also see a similarity between Ronan and Roland, too, in that both of them went into their Ordeals, went up against the Lone One in a complicated problem, and were victorious. AT FIRST. Because chapter three ends with <i>another<\/i> conflict, one that highlights the time travel conundrum that bothers Ronan as much as it does. So you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got that fake-out that reveals a greater problem, one that is far more challenging than the first one. Which isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t to say that Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s initial problem was easy, because it was CERTAINLY NOT. Seriously, if the Ordeal had ended after Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s success, I would have been satisfied. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a fulfilling struggle because it involved so many key things in wizardry.<\/p>\n<p>Ronan had to choose to save life over letting it die. He had to learn complex theories of wizardry in a matter of minutes. He put himself in direct harm\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s way\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven getting struck by lightning at one point!!!\u00e2\u20ac\u201din order to save people he had never met nor would he probably ever meet. When the Lone One taunted him with doubt and failure and apathy, Ronan chose to <i>still<\/i> fight against him, even if meant he might <i>actually<\/i> fail. THEY\u00e2\u20ac\u2122RE ALL THE COMPONENTS OF A SOLID ORDEAL, AREN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T THEY. But it was that key from Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past, that memory from a playground years prior, that made this all feel like poetic justice. Instead of fighting the vicious storm that the Lone One sent his way, Ronan<i> pushed it towards him<\/i>. In doing so, he surprised the Lone One, and y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I never get tired of people fooling It. In this case, The Lone One expected resistance, and by subverting It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expectation, Ronan was able to redirect the storm and save the people in the settlement. Which is a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 good thing? Actually, I liked that Ronan thought this:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Did I just save the future?<\/i> he thought, groggy. <i>Did I just make sure history was going to keep going the way it needed to for things to go the way they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going already? <\/i>It was too vast a prospect to take in, in all its good and evil: Ronan had to reduce it to something he could, for the moment, understand.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen the other characters do the same thing. They do the work, and they literally cannot conceive of the affect it will have on other people. They just have to move on to the next thing. Unfortunately, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153next\u00e2\u20ac\u009d thing for Ronan is the Lone Power\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spite. It is <i>so<\/i> furious with Ronan that it sends a slaver ship towards Ronan (or, rather, Ronan may have set this event in motion by saving the settlement and redirecting the storm). The Lone One desires to teach one of It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most vicious lessons: that life can be deeply unfair and deeply unjust. Without knowing what the future holds, Ronan has to decide whether to save the ship or not. To save the people on it or not. To do something that might begin the end of the slave trade in Ireland or push it even further. To risk having his wizardry taken away from him because of failure.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot, but he makes the same decision again: saving life is better than allowing it to perish, even if the those people are, by and large, Bad People. It <i>feels<\/i> like the right choice\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe vowed to protect Life\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m worried, but IS THAT WHAT I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M MEANT TO DO???<\/p>\n<p>Oh god, I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening next, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/7yq0ML7kSCU<\/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 third part of the third chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Ordeal pits him against a violent force. 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-4565","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\/4565","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=4565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->