Monday, December 28, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Blazewrath Games by Amparo Ortiz

 




Blazewrath Games is a YA Fantasy novel that is also the debut of author Amparo Ortiz.  The novel features a plot that will feel very reminiscent of other novels in its alternate history fantasy setup:  take our world, add a second world of magicians that becomes known to the "regular" public years in the past, add in dragons who often bond with other humans with various magical abilities and physical forms, and finally have all these things come together with a World Cup of a sport involving all of it.  So yes, this one certainly will remind readers of some major elements from Harry Potter, because it certainly seems like the author set out at one point to do her own spin on that, except centered on a Puerto Rican girl (and featuring many other people of color) in a world filled with publicly-out LGTBQ people, and a fantasy sport that makes slightly more sense than Quidditch.

Which could be a pretty good starting point for a novel, but Blazewrath Games - though fun - has a lot of problems.  The book is clearly trying very hard to do a better job with its world in all the areas Harry Potter failed, and to deal with strong themes such as what it means to be Puerto Rican in the diaspora vs from the island itself, about self-confidence in the face of despair, and about the power in just being yourself....but it stumbles repeatedly, never quite fully exploring any of these themes in depth.  Add in a plot that suggests some interesting twists and turns and basically has none, a problematic sportswashing element that misleads the reader about the state of our own world, and well....I just wish this had faced another serious edit, as its fun core gets swamped by the other problems.  

Note: I read this half as an audiobook, and the audiobook reader is excellent.  So if you do want to read it, that format is worth your time.  

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
Since she was 5 years old, Lana Torres has always been infatuated with the sport of Blazewrath: an international athletic competition featuring dragons and humans working together to win a contest of athleticism and skill.  Now 17 year old, she finally thinks she has a chance of working towards that dream - as team Puerto Rico, in the competition for the first time ever, has an opening for the coveted position of runner, and they're hosting tryouts for Puerto Ricans living now on American soil...like her.  All she needs to do is find a way to sneak herself to tryouts without her mother - who has hated dragons since one nearly killed Lana back at age 5 - finding out.  

But there are those out there who don't want the Blazewrath World Cup to go on, most notably the evil Dragon known as The Sire, who was cursed into human form by his former partner and now, aided by his human Dragon Knights, wreaks havoc on the world in the name of Dragon supremacy.  So if Lana can somehow find her way onto the team, she'll have to deal with the uproar being raised by the Sire - who will destroy everything and everyone in his way to get what he wants...including Lana's family.  It will take all of Lana's wits and underlying talent to survive and win the competition...a competition with more going on behind the scenes than it seems.  
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's start with the good stuff first, because Blazewrath Games is a fun novel, just one with a lot of problems, and I don't want to lose the fun parts here.  You have a fun set-up world where wizards live among humans, with three levels of wizarding talents (Copper Wands, Silver Wands, and Gold Wands).  You have dragons of tons of different varieties and talents who mostly seek bonds with humans, although a few are wild and still very dangerous.  And the setup in theory of the Blazewrath competition is a lot of fun - like Quidditch, you have a number of different roles for players that all wind up with the position of our hero - Runner - being the position who basically determines who wins in the end, although unlike Quidditch, the other players have a more significant role in helping make that happen, either by giving the Runner a head start through achieving their tasks first, or by directly trying to stop the opposing Runner from making it to the goal.  

And Lana as a lead character, in whose head we experience the story, is genuinely easy to root and care for.  Lana is a girl living with separated parents (who fell out on account of a dragon attack when Lana was 5 - her father is a dragon researcher) who is desperate for love from both of her parents, but she still feels like her mother - who is scared for her about dragons - smothers her in her caution and in refusing to openly love her - such that Lana feels she has to hide her dragon love, and her love of Puerto Rico after her mother moved her to Florida.  Lana is desperate not only to live out her dream, but to be loved, and so her mother's seeming-coldness bitterly hurts her, as does another member of the team's shunning due to Lana not actually living in Puerto Rico itself and instead being part of the diaspora.  And yet despite all Lana's hurts, she's also still brave and determined and smart and just a lot of fun, especially when paired with her best friend Samira (A Copper Wand Wizard).  Lana's a hell of a fangirl of all things Blazewrath and that could come off wrong and awkward but it really doesn't which helps make the plot generally fun.  

But there's a lot of problems with the plot, which make this book still hard to recommend despite its fun and a lot of those problems I swear come from it trying too hard to be a better book than others it might resemble.  The book is filled with LGBTQ characters - and characters in general mind you - but it doesn't always deal well with the implications of that: for example Team Russia is made up of entirely queer athletes and well, the actual Russia is a homophobic nation with dire punishments for anyone showing anything other than heteronormativity - and the book doesn't make any attempt to explain this shift from reality - which might give uninformed readers a badly skewed perception of that nation (more on that in a second) which could affect how they go about the real world.  Similarly, there are a ton of characters introduced from a ton of nations at one point, but there's not enough time to develop them, so they all wind up being broken down to singular talents that Lana knows...or worse, their appearance.  

And as I mentioned on twitter, the contest occurs in the UAE, which is portrayed as a great host nation, with a kind ambassador whose daughter serves as a very minor but kind and autonomous side character.  This is arguably more problematic than the Russia issue, in that the reason the UAE hosts and buys sporting events in our world is to distract people away from the human rights abuses that are common in that country (neighboring countries also do this), such as for example, a terrible record on women's rights.  The book essentially buys into this narrative by putting the Cup there, which well ugh.  

But getting back to the plot itself, again the book tries very hard to be a lot of things at once - a better version of a Quidditch-like game focused story!  A story with a conspiracy of people hiding secrets!  Uncertain loyalties!  And well, it either fails or chooses the less interesting path forwards every time.  The obvious bad guy, who seems at first to have potentially intriguing secrets....is just evil and the explanations for why any humans would join him never come.  A twist midway through the book essentially has no impact and I can't quite figure out how it was ever supposed to work.*  The member of team Puerto Rico who gives Lana the cold shoulder has a past history of abuse and that's made her only care about winning and so between that and her being abused by their former team member, that's the reason she's cold to Lana, but she's good by the end for some reason (a plot development that just made me shrug).  And one final act plot twist in particular** just has practically no setup or explanation at all.  

*Spoiler in ROT13:  Gur zvqcbvag gjvfg vf gung gur pbagenpgf rirel grnz zrzore fvtarq jrer frpergyl zntvpxrq gb or pbagenpgf jvgu gur Fver, znxvat gurz sbeprq gb qb jung ur fnlf be qvr.....rkprcg vg'f arire dhvgr pyrne jung gur npghny pbafrdhraprf bs oernxvat gubfr pbagenpgf ner, nf ab bar rire npghnyyl fhssref sbe qrslvat gur Fver va gurz naq gur Fver orvat sbeprq gb hfr ubfgntr gnxvat be bgure zrgubqf gung unir abguvat gb qb jvgu gur pbagenpg va beqre gb rasbepr uvf tbnyf.  Vg'f whfg...jung jnf gur cbvag?  

**Spoiler in ROT13: Va gur svany pbasebagngvba, jvgu Ynan naq Fnzven snpvat n qrnqyl tbyq jnaq Qentba Xavtug, Fnzven'f jnaq tbrf sebz Pbccre gb Tbyq bhg bs abjurer jvgu ab rkcynangvba nyybjvat gurz gb gevhzcu.  Vg'f yvxr, Jung? 

And the worst part of all, is honestly the Blazewrath matches themselves aren't that fun to read.  Because Lana is the runner, we really don't get tremendous focus on the half of the match that comes before it, and even Lana's part, knowing she's going to win, just isn't that interesting - I found myself skimming through it.  And that should've been the selling point of this book.  So we wind up with a book that isn't as fun as it should be, fun as it is, with only skin deep examining of themes like belonging to a nation as an outsider, and so many other issues.  Which makes it so I can't really recommend this one, alas.  

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)