#mjuti

Yeah, Gwendolyn is kinda being a little shit, I dunno, people who demand respect without giving it themselves just piss me off. Cat's as loyal to her as ever, her being his only remaining family member and all. Gwendolyn keep on doing shitty things to everyone until she grows out of it and eventually begin learning magic the right way and Cat discovers that he's actually a super-wizard and they lived mostly content for the rest of their lives.

Or not. But now things start to get really interesting. Involving a Gwendolyn that isn't really Gwendolyn, Cat gets in so much trouble and he only did almost none of it, Gwendolyn (the Gwendolyn that is actually Gwendolyn) goes from being a little shitty to a level of evil that even the Evil Stepmom would be distraught by, and an epic wizording battle between Family-Suddenly-Badass and I-knew-you-guys-weren't-good-but-I-didn't-think-you-were-total-assholes. Oh, and a dragon. Because every story needs at lease one dragon. It is the law.

Ranting tiiiiime~

I like Janet. Her curiosity and how she handles being dragged into a world with majyx grew on me. Cat's finally taking charge of his own life when he discovers his magic was probably the greatest part in my opinion. Chrestomanci and family were interesting enough, and when they went into full magic battle mode - wow! I think the most interesting parts were when magic was used/involved, just because it's interesting to see how DWJ embed it into their everyday lives and special occasions. 

DWJ did not skimp on the wickedness with this one. Gwendolyn is just being so evil and selfish and I really hate hate detest how she treats Cat (not just sacrificing her own brother but when I realized how she's been using him from the beginning urrghhh). She is just a kid but she's already reached evil-stepmom level of evilness and am so looking forward to hopefully seeing that being explored upon.

I've read some of DWJs other books and short stories and I love how, with the other books it is just implied and hinted to, but they all have this attitude towards magic that is so "Well of course there's magic. Have you looked at the world, how could there not be magic? Give me one reason magic shouldn't exist and I'll give you a dozen stories explaining why it does." Charmed Life does this more so than others, because there are literary TONS of different worlds out there where magic is a thing!

Another thing I've realized is that by not really having much of an antagonist but there still being bad-guys in her books, DWJ gives a pretty clear picture of how the world works. There are going to be people like Gwendolyn who'd throw their own brother under the bus to save themselves nine times, there are people who are just assholes and mean and bordering to evil, that doesn't make them undeniably bad or any less of a person. They're still people, with other traits than just being the bad-guy, they're just bad at being nice to people and you should probably stay a safe distance away from them.