Author: DD Roy
Publisher: Casey Shay press
Rating: worthy
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
Please note that this review is going to have a few more spoilers than I like to post in a Net Galley review, because there are some issues I need to address with this novel!
This is Book 2 of the Troubled Tweens series (aka the Magic Mayhem series, in what so far is a trilogy: Jinnie Wishmaker, Marcus Mender, Elektra Chaos), but note that this is the first I have read, so this review may be skewed for better or for worse by my not having that history. DD Roy is a fellow Austinite, so I have to give her a good review or she'll hunt me down and do some heavy Loki magic on me!
Seriously, I have to confess to mixed feelings about this novel. I started out liking it, and then started having issues with it, but then I'm stuck with the problem that I'm not the intended age range for this series. So who am I reviewing it for - me, or my kids? If you hate a novel then there's no problem. If you fall in love with it, the same: no problem; you know exactly how your review will turn out, and it doesn't matter what age range it's aimed at. The problem is that huge area in the middle! So let me play out the review for you and then I'll tell you my evil plan!
'Most magical kids get their power by the end of fifth grade," at St. Martin's Academy (so we're advised), and Marcus, the main focus of this novel, squeaked in with a week to go. He's not the only kid to have such powers. His close friends Jinnie (who can grant wishes), and the twins: Maddy (who makes people angry) and Grace (who apparently has the opposite power to Maddy's and also seems to be able to block the use of magic by others) are also empowered, but for some reason none of these kids are telling their parents anything. I'm not sure how wise it is to portray kids as purposefully keeping momentous secrets from their folks, but all kids do keep secrets, of course.
Marcus discovers that he can't turn off his power, which is that of fixing things. Everything he touches reverts to its original unblemished state. I loved the way, once home that Friday afternoon, he experimented to discover what the limitations of his power were. You usually don’t get the scientific approach in a novel of this nature. He found that everything he touched reverted to a pristine state - his shirt looked new and clean, a draw with a broken-off handle reverted to a clear, smooth stretch of unblemished wood without even a screw hole in it. The drill he picked up to re-drill the hole reverted to new!
Marcus has a dietary problem he evidently discovered (or gained) during volume 1, when his friend Jinnie got her wish-granting power (she can only grant one wish per person apparently). Marcus can't eat dairy or gluten. Neither can he "fix" himself with his power, but he can fix others. You might be surprised at how common this lactose intolerance is. The ability to digest dairy products isn’t the norm amongst humans; humans are 'supposed' to lose their ability to consume milk as we age, because this is how we evolved. We mammals are supposed to grow up and lose dependency on mother's milk, but many in the western world have retained the ability, and evolution supported this because it enabled us to take advantage of domesticated cows, sheep, and goats.
There are two kinds of kids in this magical world, the Loki who are led by coach Snicker (no kidding), and who are "evil", and the Vor (lead by a teacher named Kent), who are "good". Marcus and his friends are, of course, Vor, and they're supposed to help keep the balance in the world between good and evil. There's no explanation as to why there has to be a balance, and this was one of my problems with the writing: there's really no explanation for anything! We don't get to learn where these powers ultimately come from or how a certain kid gets a certain power (or fails to get a power), nor do we learn how these children are able to wield their power at no cost to anyone.
This flies in the face of everything else I've learned in this novel! If good has to balance evil, then what balances the use of a magical power? Who pays the cost for its use? Apparently it's free energy, and for me this undermines everything in the novel where someone speaks about balance and misuse of power. Once again, please note that I'm speaking only for this volume, as I said. If some explanation was offered in volume 1, then that might resolve these issues. Perhaps, for example, the cost of a positive use of the power is the negative use of power by someone else. This is suggested, but never follow-through in volume 2, and it's hard to see how that could work in practice, but at least it prevents the problem of getting something for nothing!
Each team has a bird for some reason. Team Loki has a Grackle which spies on the Vor. No word on exactly what species of Grackle it is (there are eleven, at least two of which are common in Austin. The Common Grackle is gorgeous. The Great-Tailed is seriously noisy). As much as I love Grackles, I have to say that the tired cliché of a black bird siding with evil needs to be slaughtered mercilessly! It's way overdone. Team Vor, of course, has a Cardinal (which is of the same order of birds as are the Grackles,so not a unbridgeable deal of difference there!). The Cardinal is female and can apparently talk in one way or another.
The Loki recruits are developing magical powers in tandem with the Vor. One of Team Loki, named Silver, stole a wish from Jinnie in volume 1, apparently. In relating this, Roy appears to miss out a key word: "…Silver Wiggins, had used the bird to help her steal a wish from Jinnie, one that Silver could grant for herself without Jinnie's help." That's ambiguous enough that I couldn't be sure if it was to be taken as is, or if the word "not" had been missed from between 'could' and 'grant'. It could work either way and it was a bit annoying not to know, but given that the text seems to be technically well-written in general, I'll give Roy the benefit of the doubt here!
There were only a couple of minor such issues that I noticed in this novel, such as the one where "...he glanced down a the gauze..." (I suspect he glanced at the gauze), and where "Mr. Santos topped spinning" (I suspect he stopped spinning). These were both on the same page about two-thirds the way through. And one more: "I'm back" says Jax, at one point, but he wasn’t actually away immediately before he said that, so I did have a few issues in figuring out the dialog here and there.
Clearly this novel is intended for a juvenile audience because it seems to have a few too many plot issues for a mature or discerning reader to countenance without frowning. For example, this Grackle is a spy and a nuisance, but nowhere do we see Jinnie wishing it away, or failing that, anyone trying to capture or kill it. They seem completely unable to cope with it, which is really sad. This is a problem with coming into a series without having had the benefit of the introductory novel(s). Maybe they tried this in Volume 1, and for some reason it wasn't possible.
The Loki consist of Bruscilla (who apparently has no power), Silver, Elektra (who can scramble thoughts), and Jax (as in 'jumping Jax' because he can jump instantly to another location. Sheesh.), so I guess it’s not hard to discern one's enemies in this world: if they have a weird or evil-sounding name, they're Loki, whereas those with a normal name are Vor!
I can see how this could be a fun series for younger people, but I have my doubts as to how well it will appeal to people who are the same age group as the kids featured in the story, and it’s unlikely to appeal to very many more mature readers, because the story is just too loosely-wrapped. For example, on page thirty-seven there's a declaration which makes little sense. Maddy and Marcus are trying to figure out how to control his run-away magic until they can speak to the temporarily unavailable Mr Kent. They decide to cut class and they sit in a darkened space, hiding and talking.
Maddy informs Marcus that there has to be a balance in the universe, such that if a Loki does a bad thing, then a Vor must a good thing. This actually means that, in effect, the Vor are very effectively under the control of the Loki! So whence the balance?! As Maddy rambles on, what she's saying sounds more ridiculous. She expresses a fear that there's no telling what Marcus is doing to the universe with his magic not being under control. Again this implies that there's no law of balance, which flatly contradicts what she's just said is a rule! Worse than this, she then calls into play one of Newton's laws of motion, specifically the one relating to inertia. Maddy quite evidently doesn’t understand the first thing about inertia.
In popular parlance, inertia tends to suggest idleness on someone's part: that they can neither be moved nor enjoined to move of their own volition. In science inertia means unchanging: that something which is moving will continue to move at a constant speed, and that something which is at rest (not that anything actually is at rest in this universe!) will remain at rest, until and unless either situation is acted upon by a force. Maddy claims that things must move forwards, although how this works when she's already declared that the Vor and the Loki quite effectively negate each other is another unexplained mystery. You can't have perfect balance and forward motion at the same time. For example, when a human walks, they are effectively out of balance the entire time. If they were balanced, they wouldn't be moving, which is quite the opposite of the proposition Maddy is nattering on about.
I'm very much rooted in science, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good fantasy, or a supernatural or magical story as long as it's told well, but even in the most fantastical of worlds, there have to be rules, otherwise the story risks degenerating into the completely nonsensical. I have yet to discern any logical rules at all in this world. Everything we’re told seems to be completely arbitrary, made-up by the author on the spot for no discernible reason. This made this novel a frustrating read for me.
Clearly a writer has no compulsion to write a children's novel and make it appeal to an adult, but I do think writers have, or at least ought to have, a compulsion not to talk down to children, and not to dumb-down stories just because they're writing for a younger audience. Even a magical story requires a sound framework within which to relate it, and if you don't have that in place, then literally anything becomes possible and your plotting goes down the drain.
On this topic there's a major issue I had with the main plot point, which I admit is an intriguing reversal of intent. I don’t want to give too much away, but something happens that initiates the Vor behaving like Loki and vice-versa. This is a cool idea, but the cause of this ultimately makes no sense. The Vor group go haring off to South America to prevent the Loki from hauling an object southwards. The very act of doing this grants them increased power, thereby rendering the whole system off-balance, which is why it must be stopped. So far so good; however, given that Jinnie can grant any wish (even if only once per person), I honestly don’t get why any of this took place at all. She could simply have had someone wish that everything was back to the way it was before the trigger-event occurred, thereby preventing team Loki from achieving their aim. There was no need at all for the trip to South America, much less the shenanigans which take place in the Atacama desert there! That wasn't the only plotting problem with this scenario, but I'll leave it at that.
There was nothing to stop the author from writing these scenes if they'd been prefaced by some logical explanation as to why this whole thing had to go down the way it did, but there was nothing offered, so it all seemed pointless to me and made the whole Vor team seem stupid. I'm sure that wasn't the author's intention! Maybe the majority of those in the intended age range for this novel won't notice things like this, but my kids actually are in that age range, and I know that they would definitely have questioned this kind of "logic"!
So here's my dirty little secret: I have to confess that the more I read of this volume 2, the more I wanted to read the original, Jinnie Wishmaker (I keep wanting to call it 'Wishbringer' for some reason!). That initial volume does sounds like it might appeal to me more than this one did. I also became rather enamored of Elektra, so I am now tempted to go get the third volume in the series, Elektra Chaos! So how am I to deal with that? I can't rate the middle one badly, and then go out and buy other two volumes to read: I'll be a hypocrite! Curse my fondness for kick-A female characters! So here's my deal: I'll rate this one a cautious (and slightly cantankerous) 'worthy' and then Roy had better come through on the other two novels and make them seriously good, otherwise I'll have to visit some Loki magic on her!
