And then the Badger Crawled Into Her Bed

Ladies! Gentleman! Members of the Jury! Kids! Friends! Loved Ones! Players! Haters! Ballers! Shot Callers! Cats! Dogs! Men! Wimmins! Janitors! Lawyers! Daughters of Eve! Sons of Adam! Jerks and Non Jerks alike! I GIVE YOU.........................



WILD MAGIC. BY TAMORA PIERCE.




OH I'M SORRY DID YOU THINK THE BOOK COVERS WERE DONE? OH THEY HAVEN'T. EVEN. BEGUN.

It's--okay, it's not even the sheer amount of covers this book is printed in-which there are even more(MORE!MOOOORE!) than I've included here-it's like Tamora Pierce READ my bad covers post and was like OOH SHE'S GIVING ME IDEAS..it's..amazing, it's like a present from the gods or THE IMMORTALS-right-okay, here we go.

Plot Overview

Young Daine is young, super young, 13, so I was just praying that there was nothing awkwardly sexual in this book (Note to Past Christina from Future Christina: Some times prayers are answered in mysterious ways! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.) Anyway she lives in a magical land called something something, and she's hired by a lady named Onua to help her herd horses to the King's castle. She's hired because she has a way with animals, oh did you know she has a WAY with ANIMALS? SHE has a way with ANIMALS! This phrase is dropped-like an anvil-on us so many times in the first chapter finally I was like "look, I'm so tired of being afraid beastiality is going to be in this book I would rather it just happen, just happen and get it over with so that I can relax and move on" and that was literally when a Badger crawled into her bed and told her she was not really human and I almost burst into tears.(Note to Future Christina from Past Christina: BLOW ME.) But nothing.. happened.. except every night, animals crawl into her bed and are all"you aren't human" and I'm just,ok, book, work with me. Work with me! I'm trying not to be freaked out by you!

...you know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of a 30 minute conversation I once had with someone proving in three specific ways why beastiality was wrong and they were all UH HUH I DON'T NEED YOU TO PROVE THIS TO ME, THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE I COULD SWING EITHER WAY ON but I was just like no, see look I figured out like these three specific reasons and they were like OK GOT IT, I GOT IT.

Anyway I need to keep moving-they meet scary monsters on the way that she ARROWS (big spiders with human heads) and she meets an injured hawk that she heals but he turns into a man and it makes no sense why any of these things happen, or how she does them but the book is all don't question it it's magic it's wild, wild magic, and then we end up at the King's Castle and her new job is to train soldiers(by being all super close to the horses because she has a way with animals.)

Um..and then a pack of wolves helps her kill some bandits that murdered her family, she defeats a kraken, and adopts a dragonet. ..

...the end.

THE WRITING. SWEET ZEUS, THE WRITING.

There are so many problems with it I don't even know where to begin. Perspectives change willy nilly and often in the middle of PARAGRAPHS and it's so confusing(probably a little like reading this blog post) and there's a narrator...kind of, but the narrator just jumps in to explain things every once in a while-and it just doesn't make any sense-and we're like, WHO THE FUCK IS TALKING RIGHT NOW, SERIOUSLY and the book is like shhh, it's magic, wild wild magic.

I'll focus on my biggest problem with the writing-the battle scenes. They don't make any sense because Pierce is too lazy to explain WHAT is going on. It will go, "Then a monster came and then Daine killed the monster" OK, WHAT! What does the monster look like? How did she kill her? What? And then there will be tons of monsters all of a sudden, and it's all so very vague and it's like-I just imagine people trying to direct a play using only the direction of the book and so people are standing around on stage, some dressed as monsters(but they don't know what to dress like so they're just wearing funny hats) and the director will go, "Okay, so then Daine kills the monster..?" And Daine would look around and be like "Uh which one?" "I don't know JUST PICK ONE!" And so she'll walk up awkwardly to the closest funny hat guy and just yell"I KILL YOU!" and the funny hat guy looks confused and shrugs and falls down dead? And then everyone shuffles their feet a little.

I'm a little sick in the head

Look, you try reviewing crappy books with weird sex themes and see what it does to your perspective. You just try it.

This book is Woman Powery

There are anvil-sized feminist themes here. Daine always wants to wear pants like the men, there are women soldiers, and Daine is always pointing out "WOMEN ARE JUST AS GOOD IF NOT BETTER THAN MEN" And that's great, I support that, but what kept running through my head was Pierce(the author) going to, you know, feminist organizations or something and being like, "seeee seee don't you want to be associated with my booook!" and them being all horrified with how bad it is and trying to hide it and not wanting to be associated with it AT ALL-"oh yes how great, she wears pants, yes we like pants here at feminists.com, but maybe you should go show this to feminists.netorwhatever, they're...way more..into pants-" and pierce is all "but look, in my book women get to be soldiers seee! SEEee! And feminist.com is all "uh huh right, is that before or after a bunch of animals crawl into her bed?" And it's just hilarious all around and it ends in an awkward handshake or something and Pierce later discovers there IS no feminist.netorwhatever-but Pierce's not thinking oh they totally blew me off she's like ohh there IS NO SPOON, and then she goes back to her tree hut made of garbage.


Book Rating
I had much more fun reviewing this book than reading it. It's terrible. 2 stars. You know, out of the normal ten.