Halloween Bingo 2026
I read this for the Dark, Darker, Grimdark square of my 2026 Halloween Bingo card.
Back to the Future. Or Mean Girls II. In many ways, this book is a repeat of the first couple of volumes of the series. Cruel and devious witches are running social circles that are deliberately nasty to decent folk. Innocent and deserving young women and men are being broken to prevent them from being rivals for power. The court of Dorothea SaDiablo (the evil meanie from the first books) is now being remembered nostalgically. Malice and narcissism are running the school that Janelle Satien tells her father, Daemon, that she simply must attend. Her cousin, Titian, is already there, but for completely different reasons (the art program). JS desperately wants to be a cool girl and fit in with the ruling clique. Her family tries to question her and gets only a ton of attitude. Is this normal adolescent girl behaviour, her father wonders, or is something darker going on? Titian and her friends find themselves targeted by the mean girls.
In some ways this is realistic. Once you've lived through enough decades, you will witness historical cycles like these. A present day example is the re-emergence of Nazism, something that our grandparents thought they had dealt with and eliminated.
I find myself magnetically drawn back to this darkish fantasy series, despite its inherent silly soap opera nature. I sometimes have difficulty keeping the multiple names of kingdoms and rulers straight, but when I'm in the mood for undemanding drama, this has been my go-to series. I only have one book left in the run. Once it's done, whatever will I do when this mood hits?
This is also Book 545 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.
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