{"id":4620,"date":"2018-07-20T05:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-07-20T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4620"},"modified":"2018-07-15T14:32:10","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T21:32:10","slug":"mark-reads-the-book-of-night-with-moon-chapter-5-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/07\/mark-reads-the-book-of-night-with-moon-chapter-5-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Book of Night With Moon’: Chapter 5, Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the third and final part of the fifth chapter of The Book of Night With Moon<\/i>, Rhiow heads home, weary from her busy day, and reflects on the awful journey she has ahead of her. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Feline Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trigger Warning: For talk of anxiety<\/b><\/p>\n

The shift in focus for this book continues to prove rewarding for me, and it is making me think about what all the Young Wizards<\/i> books would have been like if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been from the perspective of, say, Carl or Tom. How much did they<\/i> stress over the sudden appearance of Kit and Nita in their lives? In Dairine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surprise development of wizardry? In all the terrifying and overwhelming errantries that these characters were sent on? Oh, wow, this is a lot to consider, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n

But that different perspective makes this so exciting for me, especially since this is the first \u00e2\u20ac\u0153adult\u00e2\u20ac\u009d book of Duane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read. Rhiow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insight into wizardry is so different for me, and Duane utilizes that to build some convincing dread at the end of this chapter. Rhiow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s night starts<\/i> to calm down as she returns home to her ehhif<\/i>, and we get a sense of her nightly routine to relax and settle after a long day at work. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a fun sentence to type because this was<\/i> work for Rhiow! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just been complicated by the arrival of Arhu. Yet there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a haunting in her mind; she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still disturbed by what she was told she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d need to do to fix the misbehaving gate. Duane manages to replicate a specific experience with anxiety and put it into a cat<\/i>, and y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fucking SATISFYING. Rhiow tries to slip into her relaxing nighttime behavior, and yet, she can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ignore the thing in her mind that keeps needling her, that keeps reminding her of what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to do. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I recognize in my own anxiety. A thought will plague me like this, pushing itself to the forefront of my mind until I just acknowledge<\/i> it.<\/p>\n

So Rhiow has to acknowledge and consider the terrible ramifications of the Old Downsides, something that the reader had only gotten a glimpse at once. Rhiow had previously mentioned that her only trip down there was so awful she was traumatized for DAYS. Now, I fully expected that once Duane did a scene jump here that we would later find out why this was such a deeply upsetting experience. Clearly, this was meant for some other time. YEAH, I WAS WRONG. Seriously, check out the accompanying video for evidence of me realizing this in REAL TIME. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fascinating to me, though, that the one scene with the Downsides we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d scene before was more glorious than terrifying. Here, though, the Old<\/i> Downsides is not a wondrous land that is more pure and more grandiose than current day Manhattan. Nope, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where the Wise Ones, the descendants of the People, first made their Choice, and THEY CHOSE WRONG. Oh my god, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, THEIR PUNISHMENT WAS THE METEOR THAT WIPED OUT LIFE MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO??? Look, this was such a fucked up but brilliant<\/i> way of introducing the idea of the Choice to new readers but cluing in existing Young Wizards<\/i> fans into what happened so long ago. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like we get an extra surprise from Duane. Yet this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even the most messed up thing here<\/i>. Because Duane then reveals what it was that caused Rhiow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trauma:<\/p>\n

That was when they found more of the lizards, furtive and hasty, devouring the bodies of those Rhiow and the others had killed. Urruah had charged them, scattering them: and the three of them had made their way hurriedly back to the surface and to the gateway to their own world. But Rhiow had not been able to forget the sight of an intelligent being, tearing the flesh of one of its own kind for food. What kind of life is that for any creature? Down there in the dark… with nothing to eat but…<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a particularly menacing thought because it demonstrates how the Lone One brought entropy to the worlds. Wizards are meant to protect Life, and yet these beings, so alone and isolated and corrupted, take Life in order to sustain their own. They only have one another for that! That is their whole existence<\/i>. Of course<\/i> that would seem utterly horrifying to anyone, but especially<\/i> to a wizard.<\/p>\n
And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where Rhiow is gonna have to go WITH A NEWCOMER TO WIZARDRY. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a disturbing notion, and we now know that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no way around this for her or the other wizards. They have to travel to the Old Downsides, potentially fight the Wise Ones, and they have to do it real soon<\/i> or else the malfunctioning gate might start killing people. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how you build SUSPENSE. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how you seed doubt and conflict into a narrative, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how you creep me out SPECIFICALLY.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Whew, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not ready for this.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/eIGkMAJWeDw<\/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":"
In the third and final part of the fifth chapter of The Book of Night With Moon, Rhiow heads home, weary from her busy day, and reflects on the awful journey she has ahead of her. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[547,548],"tags":[513,549],"class_list":["post-4620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feline-wizards","category-the-book-of-night-with-moon","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-feline-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4620","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=4620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}