You are far from simple. You are a little universe. You are the wet and pulsing distillation of stars, a house of light made bipedal and carbon-based, temporary and infinite. You are also the void.
Cartographers used to write on maps, “Here be dragons,” when they reached places beyond their known world. When humans touch the void, they say, “Here is magic.”
I have to start by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed Son of a Trickster, and after its breathtaking ending, was really looking forward to its followup, Trickster Drift. Unfortunately, as the middle volume in a trilogy, this book suffers the fate of many mid-series novels: more placeholder than satisfying whole. Not much happens for the majority of Trickster Drift, but its thrilling and creative final climax made the whole worthwhile. Can't wait to see how Eden Robinson ties it all up!
His mom was a witch. For real. As he had found out definitively, just before he swore off the booze and the drugs. He'd always thought she was being melodramatic when she told him about witch stuff. Then he was kidnapped by some angry otters and his shape-shifting father/sperm donor stepped in to save him, along with his mother. He only lost a toe. Her particular talent was hexes, though she preferred giving her enemies a good old-fashioned shit-kicking. Curses tended to bite you in the ass, she'd told him, and weren't nearly as satisfying as physically throttling someone.
After a quick reminder of the events of the first book, we rejoin seventeen-year-old Jared nearly a year later as he approaches his first anniversary of sobriety. Knowing he needs to get away from his Mom's party house – and every temptation to dabble in magic again – Jared has decided to move to Vancouver and upgrade his high school grades before applying to college. Although they don't get along, Jared's Mom has given him the address of her sister Mave (an activist poet who desperately wants a relationship with her nephew and offers him a free place to stay in the city), and needing the support, Jared moves in.
Just as in Son of a Trickster, Jared as a character seems too good to be true: All he wants to do is study, go to AA meetings, help cook and clean around the house, and live a normal, human, life. Unfortunately, as a “chaos magnet” who has unknowingly moved into a bedroom that serves as an “interdimensional gate”, Jared's life is soon filled with ghosts, demons, and shapeshifters; and he has a hard time determining which he can trust. Jared meets plenty of new family members (who don't contribute much to the plot, but I assume they'll be important in the finale), and he keeps in touch with both his best friend back home and his Mom by text message (again, they don't add much here but we need to be reminded of them), and most of the narrative drive is provided by frequent run-ins between Jared and his Mom's psychotic ex-boyfriend who seems to be stalking him. Events do lead to an exciting finale, but it's left unclear what the final volume will resolve.
I remember marking more intriguing passages of writing in Son of a Trickster than I could squeeze into my review, but that's not the case with Trickster Drift; this simply doesn't feel as imaginative or weighty as the first book – so often the case with mid-series books. I did have some laughs, and I enjoyed being in Robinson's world again; happy to join her again to see how it all works out.
