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The biggest thing that pisses me off about book 8 of Amulet, Super Nova, is the confrontation between Ikol and Emily is anticlimactic as fuck.
She took off his mask and he died?! That’s it? Are you kidding? My elementary school self didn’t even like that which is saying a lot because most of the time when I was a kid, I couldn’t tell the difference between lazy writing and good writing; all I cared about was cool visuals.
There wasn’t even a fight scene, unless you count when Emily electrocuted some of the palace guards, which wasn’t even a fight scene since she DID NOT have to struggle at all. She pulled off his damn mask and he disintegrates like a vampire in the sunlight. And I have said this once and I’ll say it again, if it was that easy to defeat the elf king/Ikol, WAS HE EVEN A DAMN THREAT? Answer: F NO!
What also frustrates me is that it wasn’t a big deal. Again, the entire point of the revolution was to take down the elf king and when they learn that he is dead, they don’t give two flying monkeys’ asses about it. And it’s frustrating because they had so much build up from it, even from the very first book, which did not give a lot of information of the world around them, mentioned and talked about how treating the Elf King was. And you’re going to tell me, that the big threat now is some stupid shadows?!
Verdict? Super Nova made terrible choices that created bad writing from a storytelling perspective and makes me want to scream.