{"id":4576,"date":"2018-06-18T05:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T12:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4576"},"modified":"2018-06-17T20:54:29","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T03:54:29","slug":"mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/06\/mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;On Ordeal: Ronan&#8217; &#8211; Chapter 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the fifth and final chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Powers are pleased, and Ronan is overjoyed. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to finish <i>Young Wizards<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Oh, Ronan. I have to admit that this is a nice bit to end my <i>Young Wizards<\/i> readthrough on. (And yes, we have at least one <i>Feline Wizards<\/i> book coming up next, but more on that in a second.) More so than the other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d stories, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great recap of major events in the series, and it provided me a chance to reflect on this complicated, emotional story. Granted, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s through Ronan, rather than Nita and Kit, who we spent the most time with. But still! The One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Champion! The Pullulus! Rashah!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>So much has happened, and these people have changed, and I WASN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T READY.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also fascinating that my journey ends here because we still get that sense of the cyclical journey, the endless (but meaningful!) slog towards conflict. Chapter five opens with a conversation between the Lone One and the One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Champion, and elements of it are familiar to those of us who have read the whole series. The Lone One believes all are corruptible, that all of existence deserves to decay and perish. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been their mission to exploit living things everywhere in any way that they can. Yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all the way at the end of this read that I got to the BEST summary of the Lone One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s failure thus far:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>You just want to be <\/i>right<i>. To have <\/i>been<i> right. And you <\/i>weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<i>! Way back when, in that first moment of the new order, of your own will you made yourself all the things that weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t right\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecame the source of them, the fountainhead. You know it, too. But you keep telling yourself that the unfairness isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t your fault, when in fact you invented it. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pity you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t face that truth\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 because that would be the start of your journey back home.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>WELL, HOLY SHIT. And the Champion isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>wrong<\/i>! But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why the Lone One suffers from their own arrogance; they literally cannot recognize themselves as the cause of what they currently despise. (And now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking about how the Lone One eventually <i>does<\/i> make a few admissions in the series and THERE ARE SO MANY LITTLE CLUES AND NODS IN THIS CHAPTER.) They underestimated Ronan at every time, and he <i>survived<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not even the best word for what Ronan accomplished. He <i>thrived<\/i>. I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve said this in various ways a lot when talking about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d stories, but they are all SO DIFFERENT. And here, while Ronan might share an exuberance with Roshaun, you get a sense of Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pure <i>joy<\/i> at getting to be a wizard. Unlike Roshaun, Ronan never even knew it was a thing he could <i>be<\/i>! Look how he finds out, too. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s thrust into a conflict that involves time travel and the kind of big, weighty questions that are ripe for life-changing moments. He was sent on an adventure! A painful, scary one, yes, but an adventure nonetheless!!! So once he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sent back home, even though he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sick, even though he has to come up with a bullshit excuse for why he was covered in mud and appeared to have fallen off a cliff, <i>it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all worth it<\/i>. Because Ronan Nolan, Jr. is now a wizard!!! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great example of someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life changing irrevocably and it being a <i>good<\/i> thing, rather than a curse.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Of course, we know just how much fun (and tragedy) Ronan will experience over the course of this series, but it was nice to see his conversation with the Champion via a dream, who appears as Pidge again. (I understand this story better!!! Though it still would have been cool if Pidge really <i>was<\/i> a wizard.) The story helps ground what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see later, namely that it shows us how this relationship was a mutual thing, that the Champion and Ronan were always destined for greatness. But that greatness came years later, and Duane gives us an intriguing passage of time at the end of this novella. Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life does indeed change\u00e2\u20ac\u201drapidly at first, then in slow spurts until he cannot recognize it anymore. It comes in <i>busyness<\/i>. In activity. In the way his routines give way to a sense that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now part of something larger and greater than himself, but which also doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>diminish<\/i> himself in the process. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still important; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a vital piece of the puzzle in the fight against entropy. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a great note to end on: you may seem small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but you are not. You are part of the whole, and the whole does not exist without you.<\/p>\n<p>Ronan became a wizard. That makes him irreplaceable.<\/p>\n<p>So! Onwards, my friends. We shall now read <i>The Book of Night With Moon<\/i> for Mark Reads. At this point, there doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to be any interest in the other two <i>Feline Wizard<\/i> books, so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just do the first one for the time being and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll return to the others at a later date. After <i>Book<\/i>, Mark Reads will just cover <i>Discworld<\/i> so that we can make good time getting through the remainder of those books! I will most likely wait until I have a few weeks off from travel\/writing and bring back double features for a short while in order to cover the other <i>Feline Wizards<\/i> books.<\/p>\n<p>Enjoy! AND HERE WE GO.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/aZLIQdKoruQ<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\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 fifth and final chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Powers are pleased, and Ronan is overjoyed. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to finish 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-4576","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":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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