A review by roxanamalinachirila
Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane
3.0
Whale Jesus.
No, wait. There's more. Whale Jesus with a sprinkling of ongoing human sacrifice.
I don't know how else to explain this book. On the one hand, it's very competently written. On the other, back in the dawn of time, Lucifer came to tempt the whales; and as some gave in to temptation and others did not, a Silent One approached and sacrificed itself in order to seal the devil at the bottom of the sea. But the willing sacrifice must be renewed again and again whenever the seal fades, and a new whale must die in a manner as closely resembling the first one as possible.
The two kids from "So You Want to Be a Wizard", Kit and Nita, stumble across a whale just when the reenactment was about to take place. There's an open spot for a singer - and Nita offers her help, saying she could be the Silent One, since she can't really sing. And while everyone is exceedingly grateful and asks if she's really, really sure about this, nobody asks outright if she understands she *will* die. So she finds out very lately that she entered into an amazingly binding magical contract to kill herself for the good of the world. If she doesn't, the world will go to shit. But everything's fine, the afterlife is great!
While I deeply sympathize with Nita's plight (who the heck imagineshuman whale sacrifice is a thing in this day and age), something about the whole thing rubs me the wrong way.
It must be the way nobody really informs her or makes absolutely certain she understands, but just takes her sacrifice for granted (with some relief). It must also be the way in which the afterlife is praised so much that people should throw themselves at the opportunity to sacrifice themselves (and indeed, apparently they occasionally do). It might also be the way in which nobody thought to find a better way of doing things in the thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of years that this has been going on.
I'm not a fan of enforced martyrdom, or preaching it to others. It might be because I know all too well what sort of people would love a martyr or seven.
Anyway. This is an amazing book for kids, teaching them to read contracts thoroughly and ask all sorts of questions before they sign! Truly, a life saver for when they later get jobs at corporations.
No, wait. There's more. Whale Jesus with a sprinkling of ongoing human sacrifice.
I don't know how else to explain this book. On the one hand, it's very competently written. On the other, back in the dawn of time, Lucifer came to tempt the whales; and as some gave in to temptation and others did not, a Silent One approached and sacrificed itself in order to seal the devil at the bottom of the sea. But the willing sacrifice must be renewed again and again whenever the seal fades, and a new whale must die in a manner as closely resembling the first one as possible.
The two kids from "So You Want to Be a Wizard", Kit and Nita, stumble across a whale just when the reenactment was about to take place. There's an open spot for a singer - and Nita offers her help, saying she could be the Silent One, since she can't really sing. And while everyone is exceedingly grateful and asks if she's really, really sure about this, nobody asks outright if she understands she *will* die. So she finds out very lately that she entered into an amazingly binding magical contract to kill herself for the good of the world. If she doesn't, the world will go to shit. But everything's fine, the afterlife is great!
While I deeply sympathize with Nita's plight (who the heck imagines
It must be the way nobody really informs her or makes absolutely certain she understands, but just takes her sacrifice for granted (with some relief). It must also be the way in which the afterlife is praised so much that people should throw themselves at the opportunity to sacrifice themselves (and indeed, apparently they occasionally do). It might also be the way in which nobody thought to find a better way of doing things in the thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of years that this has been going on.
I'm not a fan of enforced martyrdom, or preaching it to others. It might be because I know all too well what sort of people would love a martyr or seven.
Anyway. This is an amazing book for kids, teaching them to read contracts thoroughly and ask all sorts of questions before they sign! Truly, a life saver for when they later get jobs at corporations.