{"id":4579,"date":"2018-06-20T05:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-20T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4579"},"modified":"2018-06-17T20:55:33","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T03:55:33","slug":"mark-reads-the-book-of-night-with-moon-chapter-1-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/06\/mark-reads-the-book-of-night-with-moon-chapter-1-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Book of Night With Moon’: Chapter 1, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first part of the first chapter of The Book of Night With Moon<\/i>, a danger lurks on the tracks, and Rhiow responds. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to start Feline Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hello, friends, IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S HAPPENING!!! Today, I begin the first book in the Feline Wizards<\/i> trilogy! At this point, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll progress through The Book of Night With Moon<\/i>, and then the remainder of the series will be read at a later date once I have time to do a quicker round of double features. At the very least, though, I wanted to read this book to get a taste for an alternate look at the Young Wizards<\/i> universe and<\/i> to fulfill commissions that folks have been patiently waiting for these past couple years. AND IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S HERE!<\/p>\n

So, I assumed that since this was set in the same universe and<\/i> because of the title that this would all deal with the cat wizards we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen before. In particular, I had hoped that Rhiow would be a focus, and indeed she is! But Diane Duane DID NOT GIVE ME THIS EASILY. The opening of this book is very different from the Young Wizards<\/i> series, and I loved the departure in how this was framed. Second-person is not an easy thing to pull off, but the sequence Duane gives us is so haunting and captivating. I admit I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m biased because I love train stations and practically anything written around them. Which makes me excited about this book, since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about the cat wizards who man the gates at Grand Central. (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hazarding a guess at this point, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too risky of one.) Truthfully, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something gorgeous about transit hubs at night. They are liminal spaces; they are portraits of possibility; they are eerie and altogether beautiful. Grand Central late at night is particularly strange, especially since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a busy, boisterous place during the day. The first time you go there late at night, when there are only a few MTA and Metro-North patrons rushing off to work or home after long days (or if their day is just starting), there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sense of volume to the building. Less full, it echoes more. It feels larger. You feel tinier. You marvel at the sheer impossibility of a building so grand and so well-designed existing. How did they do that? How does it stand so tall and proud when gravity and entropy is begging it to plunge to the ground?\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is within this space that Duane sets this book. (At least at first, that is.) I imagine if you came into this without any knowledge of the Young Wizards<\/i> universe, it would still make sense; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worldbuilding here, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not impossible to decipher without prior knowledge of the series as a whole. Hell, I imagine this opening is a million times creepier if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know about gates and wizardry. Which isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t to minimize how creepy it was to me<\/i>. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT THING??? Claws? Bipedal? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Razory\u00e2\u20ac\u009d fangs? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gemlike\u00e2\u20ac\u009d eyes? Hi, no, thank you<\/i>. HARD PASS. So, something<\/i> was able to travel through the gates at Grand Central in a manner that was out of the norm, and it arrive specifically<\/i> to murder everything??? Because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all we get before Duane cuts away to Rhiow, awakened by some sort of notification via wizardry. So??? Murder demon? Murder alien? Murder\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 being?<\/p>\n

I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. This wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new\u00e2\u20ac\u009d thing that Duane gives us in this chapter either. On top of this mysterious creature, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the cat language, which is apparently impossible to replicate if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re human! Which is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 real fun for my videos. I TRIED, OKAY. But my favorite thing about this\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand perhaps the element of this novel I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m most excited for\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis that Duane does not waste a single opportunity to get inside the mind of a cat and build a believable worldview once there. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL, THIS IS ABSOLUTELY HOW CATS THINK, I QUESTION NONE OF THIS. Of course they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re smarter than us! Of course their language is intense, complicated, and nuanced, and of course we interpret it as much simpler than it actually is<\/i>. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, how many of you have a cat who is a picky eater? I had a cat years ago who only ate dry food mixed in with<\/i> wet food, and both had to be a specific brand from WHOLE FOODS and NOTHING ELSE. And both those cats also would wake me early every morning, screeching at me as if they had never been fed a day in their lives. WHY. WHY ARE CATS SO OFTEN EXACTLY LIKE THIS.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So yeah, this was a delight to read based on this alone. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot to love otherwise, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a while since I read something from the perspective of a non-human. (Aside from Mavish\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d story, that is.) The text is immersive, and it was easy to figure out the cat language from context clues practically every time. Thus, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to spend nearly any time with translation, which allowed me to just jump right into Rhiow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sense of her routine in this section, too, and I imagine we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll learn more about what she normally does on a day-to-day basis. So, the question remains: what woke her up? Was that weird MURDER BEING responsible for the alarm in her mind? Is she about to stumble onto something grisly and terrifying? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M READY.<\/p>\n

Just kidding, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/tFMj5D_lf_k<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\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":"