{"id":4672,"date":"2018-08-29T05:00:20","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4672"},"modified":"2018-08-26T10:48:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T17:48:40","slug":"mark-reads-the-book-of-night-with-moon-chapter-10-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/08\/mark-reads-the-book-of-night-with-moon-chapter-10-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘The Book of Night With Moon’: Chapter 10, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second part of the tenth chapter of The Book of Night With Moon<\/i>, the next descent into the Downside begins. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Feline Wizards<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Surprise, everything got more messed up JUST KIDDING WE ALL KNEW IT WOULD. But before this descent into a nightmare begins, let us all appreciate the sheer brilliance of Rhiow looking into the abyss and screaming right back at it:\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But you will not get me to walk away from the fight.<\/i><\/p>\n
The Claw may break. Let it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be in <\/i>your throat that it breaks.<\/i><\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m coming<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
HELP ME, THIS IS SO BADASS. And I get why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so necessary: Rhiow is constantly<\/i> fighting entropy in this chapter. Every moment, she wants to give up. Sometimes she says it aloud; other times, it is clear from her behavior that she is exhausted and sad and miserable. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what the Lone One wanted, of course. The Lone One wanted to wear her down with the death of Sue, and she has to actively<\/i> resist the urge to give in to it all.<\/p>\n
Duane weaves that through these pages, too. It feels real. Raw<\/i>. Rhiow is all sharp edges here, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an example of it when she snaps at Arhu when he tries to talk to her about Sue. She assumes that he was going to criticize her for living with a human, and then she defensively lashes out at Saash when the mistake is clear. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tough to read\u00e2\u20ac\u201dpartially because I so desperately wanted to know what Arhu was gonna say!!!\u00e2\u20ac\u201dknowing that she is hurting so very much. She wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t normally be like this! The same goes for her cynicism, too. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a practical character! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d argue against that. But her realistic take on the world feels poisoned by recent events. Like this bit:<\/p>\n
Whenever that may be,<\/i> Rhiow thought. If ever at all<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
And do I really care?<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a dark moment for her, and while it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to acknowledge that it happens, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also important that she still pushes on<\/i>. She has her dark thought, but she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give up. And I dig that a great deal because it feels<\/i> so realistic to me, especially since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I have to cope with. I mean that both as a manifestation of grief and on a daily basis, too! These kind of depictions have value to other people, even if the context of how they show up in the text is different than in our lives.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
So, with all this in mind, THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, you know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great way to build tension? Warn the reader for pages and pages and pages that a thing is going to be horrifying and violent and terrible and THEN, once we arrive at that point, give us COMPLETE AND UTTER SILENCE. Because WHAT THE FUCK. I braced myself for the wave of saurians to come fighting, even though I shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> have. I mean, we knew that the antagonists had Carl deep in the Downsides, and we knew this was basically a giant trap. So, why would there just be saurians waiting to take them out? No, the Lone One and their allies had<\/i> to build some drama, and they certainly succeeded at that!!! Because this STRESSED me out a LOT. It certainly didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help that Saash had to go and make it clear that the saurians are still sentient beings who more or less got tricked by The Lone One ages ago. Which doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t negate their choice; they still chose to follow the Lone One. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a layer to it that makes this whole thing sad on top<\/i> of being horrifying, you know?<\/p>\n
That \u00e2\u20ac\u0153horrifying\u00e2\u20ac\u009d part, however, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as bad as I had anticipated, because Duane made it worse<\/i>. The Sixth Claw. THE SIXTH CLAW IS AN OPPOSABLE THUMB THAT THE LONE ONE GAVE THESE SAURIANS SO THEY COULD USE TOOLS. And for what? Well, based on the conversation that the felines overhear (THE SAURIANS TALK, I HATE THIS, CANCEL THEM ALL, I AM SO UPSET), they want to take back the Downside. And y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fascinated<\/i> by this. The saurians aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just changing the functionality of wizardry; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re changing the ownership of the Downside. At least, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how I interpreted the dialogue, though I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how believable this all is. Did the Lone One lie and manipulate these beings into believing<\/i> that the Downside was stolen from them? Or is there a real, genuine point here? Given that this is the Lone One, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m inclined to believe that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a delusion at work, but what if there is<\/i> something terrible in the exploitation of the power in the Downside?<\/p>\n
I am not convinced of that yet. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing that the Lone One is trying to make the saurians blame the wrong person for their Choice. Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the Wise Ones down in the place because<\/i> of what they chose all those years ago? Look, whatever the reason: I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T TRUST DINOSAURS WITH TOOLS. Which is absolutely one of the best sentences I have ever gotten to type, BLESS THIS BOOK.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/OxwjL4RSIu0<\/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 second part of the tenth chapter of The Book of Night With Moon, the next descent into the Downside begins. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Feline 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":[547,548],"tags":[513,549],"class_list":["post-4672","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\/4672","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=4672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}