readaloud_mom's review
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
...ugh, I am just getting increasingly frustrated with the racial messaging of this series. As a queer White reader, I can find soooo much to love here! But I don't want that to come at the expense of queer kids of color, and I do worry that it might?
In this book, I loved watching Aster take the next steps of being "out" as a witch to his extended family. I loved his tension with his mom about whether being so visible was safe/wise, I loved his insistence on being who he is, I loved his comeback to a bullying cousin's declaration of "It's not normal" with "You keep saying that like it's a bad thing". I so loved seeing him victorious in his crown of flowers! LOVED IT. Oh, and and and! I loved watching Aster inspire the younger generation of his family! And how much his big sister had his back, aww! And the purple nail polish! <3
This story remembers that Aster is coming out, again and again, in every book in this series, in each new setting, with a lot of nuance that speaks to the #OwnVoices queerness of this story. <3 <3 <3 (We're still not seeing a lot of Aster's queer aunts, BTW, but Charlie's dads continue to be visible background characters - as they were in The Hidden Witch and were emphatically not in the original Witch Boy).
Also on a world-building level, I REALLY loved that the Magical Competition For Kids involved a sufficiently prominent safety feature to explain why any parents were cool with allowing this ever! That detail alone has given me so much enjoyment!
Okay.
But.
...now we find out that Ariel Torres comes from a family of magic-stealing evil witches? The new villain is Ariel's aunt, who is getting into Ariel's dreams and telling her that hurting people is "in your blood" and that the Vanissen family will inevitably turn on her someday, blah blah blah (clearly because the aunt wants Ariel for her own ends, either as an apprentice or to steal her magic).
So with narrative inevitability, when Ariel has a fight with Aster, she calls her aunt to come get her. Then Ariel has a fight with Charlie (with more "if you'll stick around, you'll just get hurt" stuff, as Charlie is all "I won't let you leave!" - though to be fair to Charlie, when Ariel starts sprouting flame out of her hands, Charlie DOES go get an adult, yay, that is the least codependent thing that Charlie has done in a while). Then Aster won't let Ariel leave either, there is epic magical drama, etc. etc. But then eventually Ariel chooses to stay and we've got Aster being all "You know... we could be your family." HAPPY ENDING? ...in a world where all the Hispanic kids who were stolen at the USA border have not been reunited with their families yet, I feel like the most Hispanic-coded character finding out that her family-of-origin is evil but fortunately getting adopted into the family full of redheads is... like, why? Why did Osterberg decide that she wanted Ariel's character to be Ariel Torres, specifically? (And can we also take a second to contemplate the Hispanic-coded character being "fiery"? Like, her aunt actually describes Ariel as "fiery" at one point, but Ariel is also creating a lot of literal fire during the story?)
Oh, and Ariel and Charlie make up, too. Charlie asks Ariel to dance and we see some more hints that the girls might make A Romance of it. Which... I WANT to see more queer romances. I do! And I hate this, but... the particular shape of Charlie and Ariel's friendship/romance/thing still carries a particular flavor of codependency/unhealthy possessiveness that looks familiar to me as to how abuse can play out within an f/f relationship? To be clear: I'm NOT saying that this kind of emotional abuse is limited to f/f, I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying that queer relationships are inherently abusive, I'm a happily-married queer, okay? It's just... there are different shapes of abuse that our cultural narratives encourage in different subcultures, and I am not loving the normalization of the dynamic that Charlie and Ariel have going on. Stuff like Ariel saying, "You always come after me when I'm feeling the worst. That makes you the bravest person I know." And while, as noted, I am myself White and am not the best person to be picking up the nuances here - I am feeling extra creeped out with how this is going since Charlie is a Black AFAB character. Charlie loves her friends! Charlie is always giving Aster support and good advice! Charlie is always running after Ariel/coaxing Ariel out of her sulks. Apparently she has said that she'll "always look out for" Ariel. Charlie is the normie one, without magic, but she has A Big Heart. And on some level, I get it - Charlie is the one with two dads. As a queer mommy, of course I'm rooting for her to be Happy and Well-Adjusted! And I genuinely DO like Charlie a lot as a character whenever I'm reading the book! But then I put it down, and I'm like, "...hold up, was I just looking at a mammy stereotype?"
So, yeah. I like seeing a diverse cast of characters, but I am not so sure that my fellow White queer Ostertag is the right person to be writing them with sensitivity and nuance?
All the hearts for how Ostertag writes about gender nonconformity, though. <3 <3 <3
Blaaargh, I wish kyriarchy was less complicated.
Spoiler
In this book, I loved watching Aster take the next steps of being "out" as a witch to his extended family. I loved his tension with his mom about whether being so visible was safe/wise, I loved his insistence on being who he is, I loved his comeback to a bullying cousin's declaration of "It's not normal" with "You keep saying that like it's a bad thing". I so loved seeing him victorious in his crown of flowers! LOVED IT. Oh, and and and! I loved watching Aster inspire the younger generation of his family! And how much his big sister had his back, aww! And the purple nail polish! <3
This story remembers that Aster is coming out, again and again, in every book in this series, in each new setting, with a lot of nuance that speaks to the #OwnVoices queerness of this story. <3 <3 <3 (We're still not seeing a lot of Aster's queer aunts, BTW, but Charlie's dads continue to be visible background characters - as they were in The Hidden Witch and were emphatically not in the original Witch Boy).
Also on a world-building level, I REALLY loved that the Magical Competition For Kids involved a sufficiently prominent safety feature to explain why any parents were cool with allowing this ever! That detail alone has given me so much enjoyment!
Okay.
But.
...now we find out that Ariel Torres comes from a family of magic-stealing evil witches? The new villain is Ariel's aunt, who is getting into Ariel's dreams and telling her that hurting people is "in your blood" and that the Vanissen family will inevitably turn on her someday, blah blah blah (clearly because the aunt wants Ariel for her own ends, either as an apprentice or to steal her magic).
So with narrative inevitability, when Ariel has a fight with Aster, she calls her aunt to come get her. Then Ariel has a fight with Charlie (with more "if you'll stick around, you'll just get hurt" stuff, as Charlie is all "I won't let you leave!" - though to be fair to Charlie, when Ariel starts sprouting flame out of her hands, Charlie DOES go get an adult, yay, that is the least codependent thing that Charlie has done in a while). Then Aster won't let Ariel leave either, there is epic magical drama, etc. etc. But then eventually Ariel chooses to stay and we've got Aster being all "You know... we could be your family." HAPPY ENDING? ...in a world where all the Hispanic kids who were stolen at the USA border have not been reunited with their families yet, I feel like the most Hispanic-coded character finding out that her family-of-origin is evil but fortunately getting adopted into the family full of redheads is... like, why? Why did Osterberg decide that she wanted Ariel's character to be Ariel Torres, specifically? (And can we also take a second to contemplate the Hispanic-coded character being "fiery"? Like, her aunt actually describes Ariel as "fiery" at one point, but Ariel is also creating a lot of literal fire during the story?)
Oh, and Ariel and Charlie make up, too. Charlie asks Ariel to dance and we see some more hints that the girls might make A Romance of it. Which... I WANT to see more queer romances. I do! And I hate this, but... the particular shape of Charlie and Ariel's friendship/romance/thing still carries a particular flavor of codependency/unhealthy possessiveness that looks familiar to me as to how abuse can play out within an f/f relationship? To be clear: I'm NOT saying that this kind of emotional abuse is limited to f/f, I'm DEFINITELY NOT saying that queer relationships are inherently abusive, I'm a happily-married queer, okay? It's just... there are different shapes of abuse that our cultural narratives encourage in different subcultures, and I am not loving the normalization of the dynamic that Charlie and Ariel have going on. Stuff like Ariel saying, "You always come after me when I'm feeling the worst. That makes you the bravest person I know." And while, as noted, I am myself White and am not the best person to be picking up the nuances here - I am feeling extra creeped out with how this is going since Charlie is a Black AFAB character. Charlie loves her friends! Charlie is always giving Aster support and good advice! Charlie is always running after Ariel/coaxing Ariel out of her sulks. Apparently she has said that she'll "always look out for" Ariel. Charlie is the normie one, without magic, but she has A Big Heart. And on some level, I get it - Charlie is the one with two dads. As a queer mommy, of course I'm rooting for her to be Happy and Well-Adjusted! And I genuinely DO like Charlie a lot as a character whenever I'm reading the book! But then I put it down, and I'm like, "...hold up, was I just looking at a mammy stereotype?"
So, yeah. I like seeing a diverse cast of characters, but I am not so sure that my fellow White queer Ostertag is the right person to be writing them with sensitivity and nuance?
All the hearts for how Ostertag writes about gender nonconformity, though. <3 <3 <3
Blaaargh, I wish kyriarchy was less complicated.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Homophobia and Toxic friendship
More...