Friday, August 28, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Wicked as you Wish by Rin Chupeco


Wicked As You Wish is the first in a new YA Fantasy trilogy by Rin Chupeco, and it's an example of what is starting to become a more common modern/urban fantasy trope - a book in which classic fantasy tales (folktales, animated tales, fairy tales,etc) are real and happened alongside a facsimile of our own world.  I've read a number of books and works like this (hell at one point we had two TV shows on network TV with that premise at the same time) and some have been really good, while others haven't been.  So after seeing this book recommended by someone on twitter (honestly don't even remember) I picked up from my elibrary to see how it would take this trope.

The answer unfortunately, is mixed.  Wicked As You Wish cleverly manages to set up a world in which the world is still recognizable as ours despite magic and fairy tales being real alongside it, and as such makes it so that the very real world evils from OUR world - particularly the evils of ICE and nationalist/racist sentiment - are significant evils in this fantasy world as well.  That works particularly well, and the general plot and the character of our lead heroine both stand out.  Unfortunately, while those parts of this book are great, the book can't help trying to set up a billion other characters and aspects of the setting, and everything gets more than a bit muddled as a result, all the way up through it's ending cliffhangers.  I may pick up this book's sequel to see if it improves but it won't be high on my list of priorities.


----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
For ages, the Kingdom of Avalon was home to magical power and as history moved forward, it began to use that power to interfere with the injustices of the rest of the world, invoking the anger and envy from other World Powers.  And then, years ago, the Kingdom fought yet another war against its enemy, the Snow Queen, resulting in mutual destruction of the two magical powers, with Avalon encased in ice and its citizens forced to become refugees around the world.

Tala's parents were from Avalon, and Tala herself is the heir to a prestigious magical legacy in Avalon, which has "gifted her" with an agimat, the power of antimagic.  Unfortunately, in a world that desires and hates magic, and uses magic infused technology in ordinary life, her ability threatens to expose her on a daily basis, which is why she's grown up in a small town in Arizona with the rare property of suppressing magic to give her cover.  If she or her family is discovered, she knows that ICE will come to take them away or worse, but Tala has always wanted to see the rest of the world instead of merely hiding in a small town high school.

But when Alex - aka Prince Alexei, the last surviving member of the Avalon royal family - comes into her life, to come under her family's protection, that doesn't last for long.  Soon Tala, Alex, and few other teenage descendants of Avalon's strongest magical guardians are on the run from forces both mundane - like ICE - and magical in desperate search of safety and the slim possibility of restoring Avalon from its frozen slumber.  But the adventurous journey will teach Tala that there's a lot about her Avalonian heritage that she was never told, and that adventure, even if she can survive it, may not be what she really wants.....
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Wicked as you Wish features a world that is very like our own, just with the presence of magic with roots in an entire magical kingdom that has existed for most of history alongside real nations.  Those real nations are affected by the magic's presence - the US became the Royal States of America for reasons relating to magic's connection to royalty - but Chupeco does an excellent job at describing (unlike some other similar books) how the cores of those nations still remain mostly the same.  So the Royal/United States, seemingly one from a few years from now, still is in the grips of nationalist/and racist anti immigrant fervor, with ICE terrifying and torturing poor refugees and immigrant communities.  It's a country that is deregulating magical power for the benefit of rich corporations and their lobbies, without regards for the consequences for ordinary people.  And so it provides a terrifying enemy for our heroes to face in the first act of the story, because it feels so real.

What's less effective is the part of the story featuring the rest of the setting.  We have constant references to a billion fantasy/fairy/folk tales, all true, with our cast featuring characters derived from many different classic stories (so for example, one major side character is a member of the Nottingham family, as in the Sheriff of Nottingham, and he has a rivalry with an unseen character from the Locksley family).  Avalon features folk references from practically every culture, with citizens derived from cultures from every continent, not just Europe or America, but also Asia and Africa for example, which is a nice thing to see, but honestly through it all just gets overwhelming.  Most trilogies introduce the setting in the first book and then expand upon it, often greatly expanding it, in the second, but this book seems to decide to introduce the entire grand scope of the setting here, and it honestly gets just too much.

A similar dynamic occurs with the characters and the plot.  Our lead heroine, Tala, is for the most part great.  A young woman who has always felt penned in by her parents and their insistence that she remain in a town that could hide her powers, Tala is nonetheless a girl who has a strong sense of right and wrong, and as such finds herself stricken with stress upon discovering truths about the world and her origins that are far far more gray.  Unlike many novels of course, the book does not insist that Tala is wrong or that Tala has to break if she insists upon being good - it's still on her side (Game of Thrones this ain't) - but the stress it imposes upon Tala makes the best parts of the plot work as she faces conflicts she couldn't possibly have imagined.  And while this is not a grimdark novel, as you can imagine in a novel in which ICE not only exists but is a major antagonist, it is still one with some very dark elements rather than the fairy tale Tala might once have really believed existed.

But the rest of the characters and the plot are just so much that they unfortunately get kind of the short shaft.  One of the group members disappears for large stretches only to resurface to have interactions with one of the others (the book is obviously setting up a romance between them, but it doesn't come through here).  The parental figures of the main cast are mostly still alive, but get taken out of play for the entire 2nd half of the book, removing some of Tala's conflict, and the main side cast, the rest of the adventuring party if you will, are so varied that its sometimes hard to keep track, with their differences not really being that important just yet.  And the most important side character, Tala's best friend Alex, the rightful prince, is carrying a ton of clear mysterious secrets that are evidence even to Tala, but the book never bothers to reveal any of them just yet, with it seeming to send him on a dark turn late....only to then drop that dark turn in the wrapping up phase out of nowhere.  And then it all ends on a pair of cliffhangers, neither of which is surprising, but simply leaves it all even more unsatisfying.

This book is just trying to do too much, and the results is something that honestly feels like a disappointment given the strong results in a few of the areas it focuses upon.  A trilogy opener can leave a lot of plot threads open and still work really well, but it still needs to have some focus to keep you interested and on the same page, and Wicked as you Wish unfortunately lacks just that.
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