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

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/409404.html

I escaped from Portland! More specifically, I escaped from Powell's bookstore. With ... nine books in tow. IT'S NOT THAT MUCH OKAY. IT COULD REALLY EASILY HAVE BEEN MORE.

One of my finds was Pamela F. Service's Tomorrow's Magic, a two-in-one reprint compilation of Winter of Magic's Return and Tomorrow's Magic, which I will forever remember fondly from my childhood as "THE POST-APOCALYPTIC TEENAGE MERLIN BOOKS." Although definitely not the weirdest Arthuriana I've ever encountered, but they were some of my first introduction to Weird Arthuriana and I have a huge fondness for them, which holds true in the reread!

The books start out in a standard British boarding school, except the boarding school is in dystopian nuclear FOREVER WINTER future Britain. (At this point in time, this ... rings a little unfortunately close to home. BUT MOVING ON.)

Our Heroes are, of course, plucky outcasts: sensible Welly, who wants to be a great warrior but is fat and wears glasses, and Heather, who is plain and whose parents don't love her and who reads all the time and thinks pre-dystopian Gothic novels might reveal news of SECRET TREASURE hidden in the ruins. At one point when Heather and Welly are out exploring dangerous ruins looking for fictional SECRET TREASURE, they run into cool mysterious older student Earl Bedwas, who is able to rescue them from a pack of wild dogs ... somehow! With totally normal non-magical things!

Earl also has no memory of his past, screaming nightmares, and pasty pale skin. (I did not notice when I read these books as a kid that everyone in post-apocalyptic future Britain is explicitly dark-skinned except for pasty Earl, which is actually kind of cool albeit SUPER not reflected on the book covers.)

Anyway, one day a mysterious and sinister woman shows up and claims she's Earl's aunt! Earl runs away, hits his head, and REMEMBERS ALL.

( Spoilers for the Adventures of Emo Teen Merlin )

...except? There are two more books apparently???? Which came out like five years ago, well beyond the age when I found these in the library, and which now apparently I'm going to have to read, god damn it Pamela F. Service!

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/405684.html

You guys may remember when I read that comic book about a romance between a mummy and a professor's daughter because I couldn't find the other book about an adventure with a mummy and a professor's daughter that I was having sudden nostalgia pangs for.

But in the months since,

batyatoon came to the rescue and provided me with Pamela Service's The Reluctant God.

The Reluctant God basically goes like this:

OUR HEROINE LORNA: Dad, I don't want to go back to high school! All these people trying to make me care about stupid things like 'democracy' and 'separation of church and state' . . . why couldn't we just have a sensible government like the ancient Egyptians?
LORNA'S DAD: Young lady, you are going back to high school straight after you finish being a brilliant Egyptologist who makes amazing archaeological discoveries on this dig that I am supervising, and that is final.

MEANWHILE, EXCEPT ACTUALLY SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS AGO

OUR HERO AMENHOTEP: Being the teenaged Pharaoh's twin brother is boring, so I'm going to run away and disguise myself as a commoner, it will be great! :D :D :D
THE GRAND VIZIER: Actually what you are going to do is sacrifice yourself to eternal sleep and become the mummy guardian of our magical Macguffin urns that fix Egyptian mythology so everyone is always happy in the afterlife no matter how many tombs get robbed. That cool?
OUR HERO AMENHOTEP: . . . this was not the plotline I was expecting. D: D: D:

LORNA: Hey, I discovered a tomb with some magical Macguffin urns! Nifty.
AMENHOTEP: Hey, I seem to have discovered THE FUTURE! This is not so nifty.
LORNA: Fortunately, since I speak fluent ancient Egyptian, I can understand you perfectly and moreover find your story thoroughly plausible. Sure, I'll help you steal those magical Macguffin urns back. It'll be fun!
AMENHOTEP: You're not worried about breaking multitudes of laws, stealing an innocent bystander's passport, smuggling an undead person from Egypt to the UK, and getting into car chases despite the fact that you're a fourteen-year-old without a license and I'm a fourteen-year-old who's never seen a car?
LORNA: Nah. I'm a REBEL.
AMENHOTEP: OK, cool by me. Will there be hijinks? I feel I got cheated out of my hijinks.
LORNA: There will be hijinks! And magical Egyptian deus ex machinas up the wazoo! And a trip to the BRITISH MUSEUM! What more could you ask for!
AMENHOTEP: Actually the British Museum makes me sort of uncomfortable, what with all the tomb robbery that goes against every single one of my most deeply-held religious precepts . . . but Lorna's really nice . . . . so I guess that's okay?

AND THEN THERE WAS A HEIST, the end. Recommended for all your improbable mummy/professor's daughter museum heist needs!