A review by wardenred
Aerial Magic - Season II by Ari North

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

When the ground tilts underneath you, there's no point wishing that it hadn't. Wishing won't do anything. Instead, you have to stumble on forward and find a way to make things work.

This comic made me tear up quite a few times—in a very good way. It's just so heartwarming and affirming and full of empathy. Even more so, perhaps, than the excellent first installment. Or maybe I just felt that way because the POV shifted from Wisteria to Cecily and with it, the focus shifted to a slightly more adult mindset. Whatever the case, this reminded me of Becky Chambers's works with all the coziness and the kindness and trying to make sense of the messy, complicated, wonderful human experience.

Wisteria, despite no longer being the POV character, is still very much present in the story and displaying so much growth. She's sassier and more sociable. She's making new friends and crashing parties. In the four months that passed between seasons, she made a regrettable mistake involving dating the local apothecary. She's also still very emotional and full of self-doubt and struggling with fabric-based spells, and none of that makes her growth any less visible.

Cecily is a wonderful narrator, and I so much related to her struggle with showing vulnerability. It was lovely to see the backstory about Lachlan and her family and her past, and I absolutely adored the whole plot thread about her relationship with Jo. It's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, for unrelated reasons: how maybe sometimes the point isn't to solve problems but to live through them, and this storyline drives that idea home beautifully. Yeah. Maybe sometimes, that's exactly the point.

I'd be remiss not to mention Amal's storyline, too—it's beautiful and bittersweet and exactly what it should be, and I loved seeing what it meant for Cecily and how it made her grow and open up. That last chapter where this thread got to the conclusion was especially well done, with next to no dialogue and the art doing all the work. The facial expressions, the colors, the lighting—it was so easy to imagine the conversation without reading it. Honestly, the art here overall is just amazing, with such beautiful colors and such clever framing and all the diversity in faces and body shapes. Simply 10/10.

The series is on an indefinite hiatus right now, but I really hope that maybe someday, we'll see a Book III. This is truly a world I want to keep immersing myself in.
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