(no subject)

[skygiants]

So now I've read Yesterday's Magic, the sequel to Tomorrow's Magic, aka the Post-Apocalyptic Adventures of Emo Teen Merlin.

My favorite things about this book:
- the plot kicks off when Heather is given an EVIL ENCHANTED LISA FRANK LUNCHBOX. Literally, it is a plastic lunchbox covered in pink sparkly unicorns, and they're like 'ooooh, ancient technology! so pretty!' and then it teleports Heather into the clutches of evil. This is the most appropriate thing I have ever read

My least favorite things about this book:
- it starts off with fifteen-year-old Heather and several-centuries-old Emo Teen Merlin getting engaged! Yay! Celebrations ... for all ...?
- then there's the sequence with Evil God Kali that is right out of the worst bits of an Indiana Jones movie
- versus the sequence with Baba Yaga where Baba Yaga's just like 'yeah yo I guess I used to be powerful and amoral but now I just like taking care of my adopted kids and chattering a lot, anyway I'm gonna stay out of this Merlin vs. Morgan war because it's WAY out of MY league!'
- versus the sequence with Raven and Bear and various other figures whom it took me ages to recognize because if I am not mistaken they appear to be in the wrong part of the Americas ....????
- basically I'm just putting a moratorium on Pamela F. Service writing about other people's spiritual traditions and cultures. PLEASE STOP.

Things about this book about which I can only laugh:
- Heather now has magical telepathic powers to communicate with people around the world. She's always had these powers. Just because they were never mentioned in a previous book doesn't mean she hasn't always had these powers, jeez, guys, way to be prescriptivist

Comments

[rymenhild]

...Baba Yaga eats Morgan and Merlin for lunch, and doesn't require a plate. I see the problem.

[sovay]

...Baba Yaga eats Morgan and Merlin for lunch, and doesn't require a plate. I see the problem.

I would have cheerfully read a version of this story in which Baba Yaga's reaction is "Well, I don't know, I've got all these adopted kids and grandkids to take care of, I guess I could come out of retirement—did you say I have to pick a side? Sides are boring!" at which point both Morgan and Merlin have to put equal time and effort into convincing Baba Yaga that no, no, it's all right, make some borscht for the grandkids, just stay off the battlefield, we'll be fine on our own!

[brooms]

she'd barf them out, they don't have russian blood. but she could always feed them to her bogatyr horses.

[skygiants]

At least she admits that Kali (an ACTUAL GODDESS) eats Morgan and Merlin for lunch, but given that the entire sequence is full-on evil god/terrified villagers/human sacrifice, that doesn't actually help much. >.<

[sovay]

So now I've read Yesterday's Magic, the sequel to Tomorrow's Magic, aka the Post-Apocalyptic Adventures of Emo Teen Merlin.

I confess I have been avoiding this book out of general concern and a conviction that it cannot possibly live up to the gonzo awesomeness of its predecessors. Dammit.

[edit] - basically I'm just putting a moratorium on Pamela F. Service writing about other people's spiritual traditions and cultures. PLEASE STOP.

This now makes me more than a little worried about re-reading Weirdos of the Universe Unite (1992), which I loved in middle school; its cast of characters features two misfit kids and five mythological figures defeating an alien invasion with the power of WTF. I remember liking Service's Baba Yaga. She watches a lot of original Star Trek. (I can't remember as much about Service's Coyote, but Le Guin's was my definitive childhood version, anyway.) Have you read it recently enough that I can ask for a double-check on its level of horrendous cultural failure?

[skygiants]

Yeah, maybe it's the lack of nostalgia filter, but I definitely felt like it didn't live up at all. I don't think I'll be reading the fourth one, even out of fatal curiosity.

Alas, I never actually read Weirdos of the Universe! My Pamela F. Service experience was pretty much limited to the Tomorrow's Magic books and The Reluctant God, which is the Egyptian one and which I definitely did enjoy, but I also suspect she did a little more Egypt-based research ...

[sovay]

Yeah, maybe it's the lack of nostalgia filter, but I definitely felt like it didn't live up at all.

No, I re-read Winter of Magic's Return and Tomorrow's Magic when the omnibus came out in 2007, and this sounds completely so-so on its own terms!

Alas, I never actually read Weirdos of the Universe!

I loved it in middle school. At one point the two kids express annoyance with Coyote, who basically tells them to be grateful, they lucked out with him—when they called for a trickster figure, they could have gotten Loki—and the kids think about this for a minute and accept it and go on. Considering Coyote never actually caused the apocalypse, I continue to think he has a point.

and The Reluctant God, which is the Egyptian one and which I definitely did enjoy, but I also suspect she did a little more Egypt-based research ...

I have really good memories of that book, too. I'm glad to hear it holds up.

[sanguinity]

Should I ask what other figures, and what part of the Americas?

[skygiants]

I don't have the book with me right now to double-check, but I'm almost positive they're somewhere in South America, and it's Wolf and Bear ....

[sanguinity]

Which is well out of the range of anywhere I know anything about. :-/