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A review by triceroar
Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane
3.0
This book seems to have escaped the "Last Book in the Series" curse, as I liked it well enough. The only complaint that I really have is that this book is a little more 'woke' than the other books in the series. Ordinarily this wouldn't bother me, if done well, but this was done in a heavy-handed way. The author seems to push her views of gender/sexuality into the story every chance she gets, even if it doesn't really make sense for the story.
For instance, there's when Nita meets Jupiter. Her first thought is "I wonder what his gender is?" and the first thing she thinks to ask him is whether or not he has sex. Really? For the entire series Nita has been portrayed as a very level headed, focused young woman and, when she is faced with the physical embodiment of a planet in human form all she can think about is gender and sex?
Then there's the fact that Matt is gay. When Nita finds out she is horrified that she didn't know that and has to go give him an abject apology that she didn't somehow, in the one time that she met him, divine that he was gay. It's ridiculous. Matt even tells her that she's being ridiculous. The whole scene is not connected to anything else in the story and it stands out like a raisin in the middle sugar cookie. If the author just wanted to introduce a gay character it could have been done better. He could have just introduced her to his boyfriend at one of the parties. No freak out required.
Overall the author come across as strongly pushing a political view or just really sex/gender obsessed. Or as if she thinks that all teenagers are sex obsessed, which she contradicts by having her own characters state that they don't really think that sex is all that important as yet. Or maybe, considering that the first book in this series was written in 1983, she's just a member of an older generation trying to be 'cool' and 'speak the lingo' of a younger generation and failing because she is just trying to hard.
Still, all of this wasn't enough to make me not like the book, just to think that it needed a little editing to make it all fit together a little better. There were hints in the story that there might be another book coming (the whole 'don't let them take Kit thing') and if so I will probably read it.
For instance, there's when Nita meets Jupiter. Her first thought is "I wonder what his gender is?" and the first thing she thinks to ask him is whether or not he has sex. Really? For the entire series Nita has been portrayed as a very level headed, focused young woman and, when she is faced with the physical embodiment of a planet in human form all she can think about is gender and sex?
Then there's the fact that Matt is gay. When Nita finds out she is horrified that she didn't know that and has to go give him an abject apology that she didn't somehow, in the one time that she met him, divine that he was gay. It's ridiculous. Matt even tells her that she's being ridiculous. The whole scene is not connected to anything else in the story and it stands out like a raisin in the middle sugar cookie. If the author just wanted to introduce a gay character it could have been done better. He could have just introduced her to his boyfriend at one of the parties. No freak out required.
Overall the author come across as strongly pushing a political view or just really sex/gender obsessed. Or as if she thinks that all teenagers are sex obsessed, which she contradicts by having her own characters state that they don't really think that sex is all that important as yet. Or maybe, considering that the first book in this series was written in 1983, she's just a member of an older generation trying to be 'cool' and 'speak the lingo' of a younger generation and failing because she is just trying to hard.
Still, all of this wasn't enough to make me not like the book, just to think that it needed a little editing to make it all fit together a little better. There were hints in the story that there might be another book coming (the whole 'don't let them take Kit thing') and if so I will probably read it.