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Queer Airbender Twin – A review of Secret by Brigid Kemmerer

by with No Comment ContemporaryFantasy

I know Nick isn’t Aang, but that was how I had to describe him to my friends because that prospect excited me so much, okay?

And it still excites me because it was pretty well written.

Nick Merrick, one of four Elemental siblings, has more than just his air manipulation powers to keep secret; he’s gay. He’s got the hots for his cover-story girlfriend’s dance partner, but not the guts to come out even to his own twin. But tension rise between Nick and his posed girlfriend Quinn as not only is her situation at home worsening, but she’s hanging out with a sworn enemy of his family. Not to mention Nick trying to prioritise protecting his family in case a bloodthirsty Guide comes around over his own wants and dreams…

This story the more that I read it felt personal to Nick rather than the overarching plot of the Merricks vs the Guides. Am I saying it’s a bad thing? Kind of, but kind of not. It only really made an impact at the start and the finish. In the previous book, Spirit, the Guides were front, centre and a threat the entire time, ready to wreak havoc on the Merrick brothers and their allies. Here, they were established at the start to be there and then popped out of their hiding hole at the climax. There was barely a presence of them there for them to be so close to the climax of the series. It felt disappointing that the Guides weren’t really covered in this book. In fact, the Elemental side of things was hardly tied to it at all. Just kind of flavour.

Regardless, the intimate story that was there was done incredibly. The romance between Nick and Adam was downright magical. Kemmerer just does romance so well full stop! I can strongly say that my list of OTPs is very small. Nick and Adam – Nidam? – was just added to this list. They compliment each other so well and their relationship just felt so real and safe and pure. The emotions and language used made me feel so damn warm inside, no wonder I was shivering on the cold dank bus while reading this!

More on Nick, after reading this story he’s become my favourite of the brothers so far, if not my favourite character of the whole series. I feel like this book was also titled very appropriately; Secret. It was a key theme to Nick’s development; the secret that he’s an air elemental, the secret that he’s gay, the secret that he wants to move out of town. All of that was well reflected on his fear of going against what society expects him to be. Though it went so specific, it was a struggle that still felt universal and real. I understood him well solely on how he was written, how rooted he was in his fears. I feel like society is an obstacle for all of us to overcome. We often forget to look at ourselves, and I’m glad we saw that in Nick.

All that said, I started this series in 2017 when I read Storm in Year 12. Now it’s 2021, and you bet Sacrifice is only 4 more books on my TBR pile away. 5 years. 5 books. We’re on the home stretch now, Merricks. Bring on the final installment of the Elementals series!

Secret gets a score of 3.5/5. Chances were lost to tie the world to the plot better, but the plot was still something fantastic without it.

Yours in writing

Amy

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There Wasn’t Even a MacGuffin- A Review of Realm of the Gods by Tamora Pierce

by with No Comment Fantasy

We’ve hit a feat guys. I have officially reviewed an entire series on this blog. It took about 2 years, but here we are!

And I have to say, I’m not sure what to feel. It’s the final installment of the Wild Magic series’ fault. The rest of the series was solid, gracing in the above average scoring for the first three installments. Book 4 hit below average.

As the once emperor mage Ozorne has awakened the god of Chaos, the world of Tortall has never been more under threat as immortals slaughter the lands. Daine and her mentor Numair must stop their enemy from bringing the all terrifying god into the world before it wounds up destroyed.

But oops! They got into the Realm of the Gods and the only way they can stop Ozorne is to get out again!

And I mean it was an oopsie. The literal 7 out of 10 chapters spent getting back to the mortal realm only served as an inconvenience and an excuse to meet Daine’s godly dad and a platypus with a “not Australian” accent. There was literally no other purpose to being in the realm, no powers for Daine to learn, no powerful magic MacGuffin to retrieve. It was like Lord of the Rings without the ring – just the walking. The world had peaked my interest and I literally got nothing out of it. Except dialogue between councils that went in circles to decide the fate of the characters for them. The solution would have been to just take this book’s climax and tack it onto the end of book 3. Appropriately, because I hated how book 3 ended.

Next complaint I have was the Daine’s character for once was inconsistent and too immature for a 16 year old. One minute she had a bloodlust and the very next she lost it and turned nurturing. Her bizarre changes in emotions literally felt like they were there to make the plot interesting (it didn’t). And the moral she had to learn in this whole book was not to blame creatures for acting the way that they do, sometimes it is just in nature, and that they should be forgiven. But she did it from the start? It’s like she unlearnt it in one chapter just to learn it again. What should’ve happened was the flat arc that changed the supporting characters instead.

And now here comes my biggest problem with this book. Where the hell did the romance with Numair come from? Literally the only foreshadowing that this would happen was him blushing at Daine when her clothes were torn and he could see her body. Daine showed no recognition of having feelings for him until they kissed and she was suddenly head over heels. And not to mention the moral grounds this crossed. Their 12 year age difference when she is under 20 years old, for example. And how Numair first met Daine when she was 12 and developed a crush on her as she went through puberty while he taught her. Numair himself even commented on how he had affairs with ladies far older than Daine and he still had a crush on her. Do people not recognise how creepy that is? Less worrying is how the relationship served nothing to their character arcs, but it is far less significant of an issue when I was disgusted to see how romantic that kiss was. Numair should’ve stayed a mentor or even became a brother figure. Psychologically and narratively, this relationship made zero sense!

What can I say? The series finished with a sour taste.

Realm of the Gods gets a score of 1/5. It was a MacGuffin plot without a MacGuffin.

But it doesn’t stop there, dear viewers! We have to rate the series as a whole!

Wild Magic – 4/5, a rich and enticing world that peaked my interest.

Wolf Speaker – 3.5/5, it didn’t acknowledge the events of book 1, but the fantastic characters made up for it.

The Emperor Mage – 3.5/5, overall fantastic until the climax ended.

Realm of the Gods – 1/5, it was pointless.

Tamora Pierce knew how to make a world and characters, though the writing could be stronger. It never had any particular flair to it that kept me engaged. However, the series’ main flaw especially in later books was the narrative – not connecting books, not knowing appropriate endings and even making an entire book pointless – that last point being especially bad when happening in the final one! Having studied narrative and letting it be the primary hook for me when reading a story, this makes this series a real bummer.

The Wild Magic series gets a score of 2/5. It’s going off the bookshelf.

Yours in writing

Amy

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Foul Fish in the Sea – A Review of Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

by with No Comment Historical Fiction

A review on the back of the book said that this was the only war fiction that they read that ever made sense.

Bullshit.

I would try to tell you what Catch-22 is about but I genuinely don’t know myself. I read on the synopsis it was supposed to be about the troubles of a paranoid bomber on an island in Italy and him trying to leave the war for good. I thought it was going to examine his attempts at trying to loophole various loopholes that would keep him flying at death’s door for the rest of his life.

Instead I got a headache and wasted 10 weeks trying to finish this thing just to tell you guys how bad it is.

Being a book taking place in the Second World War, I had high hopes for this and despite the confusing narration I kept on trying. Catch-22 wasn’t the first novel with odd narration I had read – in fact my all time favourite is one of those books. However, I can clearly say that this book put me off nonlinear novels all together. I wouldn’t mind reading something nonlinear if I could actually tell when I was taken forward and back in time. There was literally no way to tell up until the last quarter or so of the book.

I’ve heard many people say that they took a couple of rereads of the first few chapters before they got to reading the book. Heller should’ve known this would turn off readership. My word of advice if you can’t get into it within the first read: don’t. It’s not worth it. Here’s a few more reasons why:

Even without the changes in timeline, so much of this book was filled with filler. Every character had a backstory included in this book which brought nothing to the overall narrative. I don’t care that this Major’s wife doesn’t love him back – he was only present for three chapters in the book. Though Major Major’s backstory was pretty sad, it did nothing to the plot but make me wonder when we’d be going back to the story of the main character Yossarian. Was he even the main character? I can’t tell you. Barely any of the book touched on him trying to get out of the war when compared to all that wasn’t him trying to get out of the war.

I couldn’t tell you what any of the characters looked like. Each of them was described once, some of them without even a hint of their eye colour, and then nothing about their appearance was ever brought to attention again. This was terrible considering not only that there were so many of them but the fact that they were all white boys. Like 80% of the cast were white boys and only know the hair colour of one of them. Do you know how hard that was to visualise things and not get characters mixed up?

The “realistic” dialogue drag the story out for far too long. Yes, when we talk naturally we have a tendency to talk back and forth and eventually in circles and tangents. Conversation naturally drags our attention away from what is important. You can already imagine how poorly this translates in creating a narrative, especially when these tangents become pages long. To a reader, this is too much. I just want the story to continue.

A vast majority of the text was written in lengthy unreadable paragraphs that took up 3/4 of a page. Pieces weren’t broken down to make the text easier to digest, but it didn’t matter because as I said before there was a lot of filler. A bunch of “He said that she said…” was present. I found great joy in skipping paragraphs entirely, and that’s bad.

But in light of all these errors I decided that I wouldn’t hate on the story so harshly at first glance. I decided to give the TV series adaptation a watch to see if the story would actually be something I would enjoy. Some of the issues still stood like filler dialogue and difficult to distinguish characters, but I can conclude the following:

For once, the book was not better.

Catch 22 gets a score of 1/5. It only had the potential to be something average.

Yours in writing

Amy