Supernova

While I mostly love the ways that these characters are presented (though I do wish there were more consistently existing parents of children in the story, since some of the parents seem to get dropped in the middle), there are narrative choices that leave me a bit confused because there was nothing really choreographing those decisions earlier.

A major plot point with Navin and Aly seems to just... come out of nowhere, and I'm not entirely sure why it's even part of what has been happening. Nothing really prepares the reader for Navin and Aly (along with other characters) to go to a space station and then to another planet. For every other book, we've remained on Alledia; suddenly, we're introduced to Typhon and how it and Alledia are connected... except we've never really heard of Typhon to begin with. And there was nothing indicating a space program, either.

I don't inherently dislike that as a turn, but I think it needed sufficient signposting in earlier books so that it doesn't feel like something totally random and like Kibuishi couldn't figure out how to continue the story any other way than tossing in a random new narrative point. As it stands, though, I think it just conveys lazy writing and a failure to engage with the world on Alledia that has already been built and developed throughout the course of the story.

Another thing that I'm not a huge fan of is that conflict isn't... actually conflict? Trellis enters Valcor (land of the elves) to reclaim the throne, but then he decides that the "false king" (his friend and ally Gabilan) should remain as the king and that he will become the adviser. I think Trellis's decision makes sense, but the fact that Gabilan barely resists (even when he does) any of the advice Trellis gives him on how to protect the kingdom... is strange. Gabilan was shown as being very headstrong and requiring evidence or countermeasures to persuade... And here he's just like "Well, I guess you're right."

Everything feels too easy sometimes. I don't think we need an all out war, but it'd be nice to have some degree of tension and actual disagreement. There's a lot of "work together in peace" type talks that just feel so... frustrating because that's not how interactions between people occur. Sure, we can sometimes be like "Oh, yeah, actually you're right," but it's usually because... it's very obvious to ourselves that we're wrong. It's weird to have a value or a principle and then just kind of go "Ah, well, shucks. Guess I just gotta dump it for something else because you were nice to me!"

I like the potential of the story, but it often feels very liberal in the most infuriating ways.

One thing I know adults reading this often complain about are how the kids are shown as stronger than everyone, and I actually don't mind that. Only Emily is really shown as being stronger than others (as a Stonekeeper). She embraced the powers earlier, then she became more cautious of them, then she gave in to them, and then she learned to defy and fight against Ikol (the voice in the stone that can control Stonekeepers). That is literally the path of her whole story arc and gets her to the character she is at the end of the series.

The adults telling Navin that he is a natural leader is very funny because even he resists that and pushes back, and I think that's a good thing because he recognises that he's not but that he is capable of being so. He still sees the possibilities for growth (though, there is a teacher who he has to convince to let him do something in an earlier book because that teacher thought Navin was incapable). If anything, this could be a good commentary on the way that adults constantly push their problems on children if it was reworked somewhat, especially since this has been a perpetual thing that has been done ("the youth are okay" or "the youth will fix it" or "it'll get better when the young take over" are all things that have been said by generations older than them who do nothing at all to solve the problems they created or enabled).

So I like the kids and their portrayals. They can be useful conversation starters, especially if you're an adult reading it with a kid.