{"id":4503,"date":"2018-04-03T05:00:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-03T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4503"},"modified":"2018-04-01T09:26:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T16:26:36","slug":"mark-reads-on-ordeal-roshaun-chapter-1-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/04\/mark-reads-on-ordeal-roshaun-chapter-1-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads “On Ordeal: Roshaun” – Chapter 1, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, now I just feel sad about Roshaun all over again, and despite knowing large parts of his story, this was\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, it was a lot<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to imagine other readers relating to Roshaun and the sense of duty that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been forced upon him, especially if you had the sort of parents who expected a specific path of you. Of course, his life is a rather extreme example of that, and in Wellakh, Duane has constructed a complicated world of friction, wealth, and duty, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all filtered through Roshaun. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never really gotten anything from the point of view of him before, and yet, you can still get a sense that this<\/i> version of Roshaun has a lot of growing until he reaches the point where we know him.<\/p>\n

But I also feel like I already<\/i> understand him. Duane uses the opening of this chapter to build a sense of isolation in Roshaun. His mother is nearly assassinated, something that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so common for his parents that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153event\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to them, but you can tell that it eats away at Roshaun. Despite its frequency, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> feel normal to Roshaun. Truthfully, none of his life does! People don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t befriend him, not even to get close to a Sunborn, so you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the sort of cult of personality aspect you get in our world, for example. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a brilliant choice on Duane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s part, and I love how uncomfortable<\/i> this is. Roshaun and his family might have wealth and some familiar trappings of it, but wealth doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t operate exactly the same way that we might recognize it. Yes, there are still plenty of people who long to be rich (or to win the Wellakhit version of the lottery), but that desire doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to come with a longing to be<\/i> Sunborn. Rather, no one<\/i> seems to want to be these people, even if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re necessary, even if Wellakh simply can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exist without the royal wizards.<\/p>\n

Thus, Roshaun has a childhood utterly unlike the world that most people might know. Strangely, I found that I could relate to Roshaun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sadness, his desire for any<\/i> sort of positive interaction with his peers. I had friends at school, but it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t easy to maintain them because I was not allowed friends outside<\/i> of class. Until I was sixteen, only one<\/i> person I ever was friendly with ever came over to my house, and I was never<\/i> allowed to see anyone else. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a dynamic here, then, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to describe because I just know <\/i>it intrinsically. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like Roshaun is watching the world go by without him. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in it, and yes, he has these brief moments where he gets to be part of the flow, but they are punctuated by long stretches of loneliness. Long stretches where Roshaun observes other<\/i> people going about their lives, and he remains separate and apart from it all. It certainly doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help that where he literally<\/i> lives is also so drastically separated from the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153normal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d people of Wellakh. How are the people ever supposed to feel like they can<\/i> be friends with Roshaun when this is his life?<\/p>\n

Seriously, his friendship with Dairine makes so much more sense now that I know more about his upbringing. She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s royalty; indeed, she is contemptuous of it most of the time. She enjoys him for who he is. She willingly spends time with him. SHE IS NOTHING LIKE ANYONE HE HAS EVER, EVER KNOWN.<\/p>\n

So, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite remember much of anything about his Ordeal and what it was, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to see what comes next!<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/3ZvwZ00QeQM<\/p>\n

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

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\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":"