Book 2: Enter the Enchanted
Publishing Date: September 1999
Narrator: April
My rating:
So if this book sucked as well, I was ready to give up on Project EverWorld. And yes, the writing was surprisingly bad and juvenile, which I can’t even comprehend, because this is K.A. fucking Applegate who wrote beautifully the first half of the Animorphs series, so I can’t fathom why there are so many punctuation mistakes in this book.
This book is told from April’s point of view, a horny wannabe actress who hates being a girl because it makes her weaker than the boys, and who wants nothing more than to bang Sir Galahad – yes, the Galahad – when he saves her from a dragon. This book is another not-really-going-anywhere filler, but gets bonus points because at least it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.
In this book we see how April deals with being yanked back and forth between worlds, and her inferiority complex when it comes to her manipulative, beautiful, dangerous half-sister Senna. The whole book revolves around Senna. The dragon was after Senna. Loki comes after Senna. Merlin and Galahad work together to protect Senna. Senna escapes after displaying her power and having her ass kicked by Merlin. Senna Senna Senna. There’s no real arc because it’s mostly about the fighting.
I was looking forward to reading April’s book because she’s not a coward in hero’s clothing like David, and she’s not a misogynistic prick like Christopher. In fact, she’s quite deep and can read people quite well, so we get some insights into the other characters we either may not have thought about before or just needed confirming.
The biggest problem is that April is one of two girls in a pseudo-Medieval patriarchal misogynistic society, so yes while Galahad is totally swoony and all ‘Stand back, my lady, I will protect you!’ April’s still stuck being ‘the girl’ and doesn’t get to fight like the boys do. And she hates this, but at the same time she’s grateful because she’s pissed scared as well. April’s voice is a little different to the previous two and she uses heaps of acting references to make sense of her world, which I really liked.
I think Jalil’s book is next, and I’m looking forward to being in his head.
