This fantastic book is for all those who feel betrayed by JK Rowling
I was immediately taken with Awake writing style. Our narrator is omnipotent and has a personality, even making characters’ descriptions a joy to read: “He is a gentleman of the alto the experience, now an occupied, slow and deliberate bass in his words. (…) He has a nose as someone played his tail on the donkey with a scalène triangle, rope it in relation, and called it one day. ”
(But if I am honest, I have already been sold on this book by cover and premise.)
When we meet Wilder, they have just woken up with magic. They can understand all languages on earth. But they do not notice it immediately – they are too busy trying to reconstruct concerts to make rent. When Quibble appears – literally, coming out of a tear he made in space -time – in Wilder’s room and announces that he is there to invite Wilder to join their alloy, this is not well going well.
There is a lot to love AwakeBut it was the painfully real characters and their interactions that have achieved the most. Our narrator provides a context, showing how they speak each other in an informed manner by their own trauma. When the conversation of Quibble and Wilder goes south, Wilder is unleashed by laughing: “What is even the interest of you?” But Quibble, who grew up “really rich” has no concept of his sentence to be linked to the service, and to the place of being injured, he is perplexed. “Quibble and Wilder are so much mistaken that baffles hurt Wilder when he doesn’t mean, and Wilder can not hurt when they want.”
Finally, however, Wilder is so overwhelmed by their new magic – having so many conversations that it becomes a cacophony that they cannot block – they reluctantly accept to join the Covers, and this is where we meet his other members: Artemis and Mary MARGARET, who are both trans women. Trans. Mary Margaret is in high school, and Artemis is a parental figure for her, but it took a long time for Mary Margaret to develop trust in anyone.
Although it is not always easy for the four to communicate with each other, they will have to understand how to work together and pool their magic when an AI begins to communicate with them and quickly develops in power and cruelty.
I have the impression of being able to talk about this book for ages, especially unforgettable characters. I did not even mention how the story is structured around the cards of Tarot, nor the scene where they threw a love of protection on a dragster spectacle, or the heartbreaking romance of Artemis with a king of dragste, she is not entirely ready to let in her life, or to the surrealist final battle and to her bittersweet conclusion. Oh, or that it has a sex scene unlike all that I have read before: it is a trio, but one of the characters is not bodily.
It’s a complete story, but I can’t help but want to go back to this world. Osworth is clever to develop characters who feel as complicated as real people. Their small family is so hard won, and I want to continue to visit it.
So yes, if you feel betrayed by JK Rowling, take this. But it’s much more than that. Whenever the character threw a spell, they being with “Be careful.” Something incredible is about to happen. ” And Osworth really did something incredible with Awake.
