Devon is, in so many ways, a normal Australian teenager,
like so many other teens
Until he runs into Renee in a nightclub and learns
something awesome – and terrifying – about himself
He is a mage: a being of incredible potential power. But
there are few things more corrupting than power.
The core of this book is that Devon is, ultimately, an
ordinary person. He’s an ordinary teenager who discovers something surprising
has happened to him. That’s the defining feature of how this book is laid out,
starting from its very ominous beginning where we clearly expect something very
unordinary and pretty horrifying to happen. This book is the origin story. This
is where the vaguely mentioned ominous things find their beginning
This is where we have the ordinary man begin to become
something so much more
So the very ordinariness of the book is the point. Devon
is a teenager, an 18 year old with very 18 year old problems.
He has friends who aren’t always good people but who he
cares about. He has romantic issues with Tina and lots of fumbling awkwardness.
He’s not academically gifted and school is both a struggle and a trial. He has
clashes with teachers but, unlike so many other narratives, it’s quickly clear
that his teachers do actually care and aren’t just terribad awful people he has
to navigate around. He has some concerns about the future but is largely ignoring
it even as other people try to get him to take it more seriously. It’s a very
normal reaction – he’s a kid trying to avoid hard questions he has no answers
to.
He has a lot of very real world problems and it is
excellently portrayed.
The problem is… I don’t really care.
