As a sequel to Minimum Wage Magic, Part-Time Gods by Rachel Aaron brings back Opal Yong-ae for another magical adventure through the DFZ. Having paid off one more installation of her debt and bought herself more time, Opal is still on the quest to earn enough to fulfill the rest of her debt to her father, who she discovers at the end of the previous book has placed on her a dragon’s curse responsible for her bad financial luck for the past several months. Throughout the first part of the book, Opal and Nikola Kos, her now-permanent business partner, rushes round the DFZ, struggling to purchase enough units to clean at the auction and sell items in those abandoned units for an income. Their personal adventure is as fun and rewarding as in the first novel. We see some more places in the DFZ like the Night Lot—a giant flea market in Rentfree, a zone where buildings shift around at all hours—and get introduced to a new species, dream slugs, a kind of slug that sucks up magic and ruins the merchandise of a magic store that the characters have bought. Small worldbuilding details like the Night Lot and the dream slugs are what makes the DFZ feel alive and intriguing. As the novel’s title hints, we are treated with the appearance of a god, the DFZ herself this time. She appears different each encounter, speaking into Opal’s head when needed. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the DFZ’s appearance, learning of her motivations and character, is one of the highlights of this novel. The other highlight for me is the explanation of the schools of magic in this world, including the introduction of shamanism, a different form of spellcasting than the form that we’ve learned about in the first novel. Speaking of the first novel, a main complaint of mine was Nik’s character. We didn’t learn much about him, and I wrote that I wasn’t that excited to have him return. In Part-Time Gods, Nik tells Opal a condensed version of his childhood, including his mother who was never around. Knowing a bit of information about him, I feel a little bit less like Nik is a stranger to us. A second complaint dealt with the irrelevant and unappealing romance that was teased between Opal and Nik. Sad to inform, the romance issue grows in this novel. Despite the fact that Opal and Nik have known each other for about two months and unless the two have been having secret conversations together outside the awareness of the readers, don’t know too much about each other, the two decide to have sex in the most cliché scene I have ever witnessed in a novel otherwise written this well. The rest of this discussion will include spoilers, including ending spoilers. If wanting to keep the book unspoiled, do not proceed. I discuss the cliché sex scene further and a development toward the end of the novel that I do not think was built up enough and could, depending on one’s interpretation, lead the novel to have a bit of a problematic message. For those pausing, I give the final verdict here: I still thought this novel to be a pleasurable read, even if the ending was a bit disappointing, but if one has read the first novel and isn’t sure about this novel, I wouldn’t without a doubt encourage one to read it since the first one stands on its own fine. Spoiler Discussion Section In the few scenes that could be considered a part of the climax or perhaps the scenes preceding it, Opal visits her father, who has taken up residence across the river in Canada, to fulfill her debt in person. Being the narcissistic that he is, he refuses to give up even when he has lost, and he attempts to kidnap her back to Korea. She escapes and ends up back in Nik’s apartment because she doesn’t know where else to go. Nik tells Opal that he’d rather live on the run with her than let her return to Korea and reveals that he’s had a crush on her since the first time that he saw her. Despite the two never having gone on a date, Opal and Nik decide to have sex in a scene that I skipped because I don’t like visualizing straight people having sex. This scene lasts for a literal three pages on an Android Kindle app. In another reveal, Nik tells Opal that their plan to hide from her father together will work as long as he is the sole breadwinner because he’s been working on the side to support himself and her, and he has learned that as long as Opal is not involved, her curse won’t activate, and he won’t have an issue earning an income. Opal throws a fit because she doesn’t want to be dependent on him or have him “keep” her and runs out of his apartment to wander the streets. I have never supported their relationship, for the most part because I don’t believe in fast romance. Though there are even faster developing relationships out there, and to us the readers, it was spread over two novels, for the characters, less than around two months have elapsed, and Opal and Nik spent most of those two months working from morning to night as far as we can tell. There is little indication of that the two are compatible. Opal likes Nik because he’s muscular and sticks around despite knowing of her father. Nik likes Opal because she doesn’t see him as a tool and doesn’t abandon him to save herself in life-threatening situations. Nik’s feelings seem a little more genuine since he’s had a crush on her even before the events of the first novel began, but Opal’s feelings could be based on the fact that Nik is reliable and available, not on true love. If she didn’t have the curse and there were other men available, would Opal still like Nik? The other issue that I find with the scene is how cliché and plain dumb the context is. As far as the two know, Opal’s father could show up and smash down the door whenever. That’s the time to run, not have sex, and Opal notes this fact, so the author knows the situation is cliché but runs with it regardless. I’ve neither been in the situation of wanting to have sex with someone who I’ve known for two months nor the situation of being hunted, but one would think that life-threatening situations would make survival instincts kick in and overpower all other instincts. The other cliché is of course the fight. Rational people would’ve waited until the situation wasn’t dire to have time to talk about all things instead of having random sex, then a fight wouldn’t be needed. The fight itself I found not too bad. Opal refused to go with Nik because she wants to be independent. I found it a mix of not too rational since Nik, unlike her father, wouldn’t have the power to keep her if she changed her mind later, as well as understandable since Opal in several previous scenes has shown a significant distaste for feeling like she’s in a cage. I think this argument could’ve worked well in a version of the novel where she doesn’t have sex with him despite the fact that her father could show up in minutes. I’m stopping here because there is so much wrong about the start of their relationship, if one can even call it that. I expected this subplot, but did it have to go down such a cliché route? Yong: a Narcissist? Even ignoring this huge issue, I’m not sure how I feel about the ending of this novel in general. Also, the below contains spoilers for the ending of the main plot. Experimenting with the curse, testing its boundaries, Opal and Nik discover that the curse affects her when she’s selling something but not when bartering, so Opal figures out a workaround: she sells something for gold then exchanges gold for cash since the price of gold is based on the market. The curse attempts to crash the gold market, but since the market is huge, this drains Opal’s father’s dragon fire and source of magic until he’s on the brink of death. But Opal realizes that she doesn’t hate her father and doesn’t want him to die, so when his sister and rival, White Snake, swoops in to kill him, Opal saves him, and the novel ends with him seeming to be in some sort of coma but alive. While the first novel’s sole main theme was freedom, Part-Time Gods is a little bit more nuanced, and it raises a question: what is the relationship between Opal and her father, and does her father love her? We receive two sources of information. The first is the flashback in the prologue where we see Opal failing to cast a spell and blowing up some pumpkins. Her father picks her up and lets her sit in his lap as he meets with a visitor, letting her get pumpkin all over him. Later, Opal mentions that their relationship was good when she was little, confirming that scenes like this one weren’t rare. Other than this scene, Opal’s experiences with her father seems for the most part negative. He engineered her with the best geneticists of the world to be beautiful and a good mage, and she is neither, and Opal even wonders the reasons behind her father still wanting her despite her being a worthless failure, so it seems he disparaged her more than complimented her growing up. The second source of information is Opal’s conversation with the Peacemaker, the dragon who rules the DFZ who is not pleased with the current situation because the gold market crash is bad for his kind, though he cannot do much about it. Opal requests for him to remove the curse, but he does not want to start a war with Yong, instead suggesting that the two talk it out. The Peacemaker tells Opal that he believes that her father does love her because he refers to Opal as his child, not his belonging, fought for her without her knowledge to be able to move to the DFZ—there is an application process for outsider dragon’s mortals—and he hurts himself with the curse to keep her with him. The Peacemaker remarks that for an old dragon, coveting is a lot safer than loving. Though the Peacemaker understands Opal’s plight, I feel like he ends up on Yong’s side, encouraging her to seek a peaceful solution with him rather than lift his own finger. As a dragon, I think his stance is reasonable—though I question his reasons behind the arguments that he gives to Opal, it’s possible he doesn’t believe them himself but needs Opal and Yong to stop fighting—He has no obligation to concern himself over one mortal’s life, more concerned about the gold market and the rising tensions from dragons who hoard goal. So then, I have an issue with Opal. Opal’s reason for not hating her father and refusing to kill him through his overuse of the curse, even saving him in the end, is not even that her father loves her, it’s because he’s her father, and I’m not sold. Opal herself doesn’t give a reason for this excuse being valid and remarks that it might be stupid. Lots of people hate their own fathers, perhaps even wanting them to die, which Opal points out to herself. It’s not super rational, and I think the author knows this. Still, it’s a twist, and it could be a good one if some changes were made to the book. What might sell me is simple: more scenes from when Opal lived with her father, like the one in the prologue, more scenes that show their relationship in a positive light. Perhaps Opal could be seen questioning her relationship with her father, reflecting on those positive memories earlier on in the novel so it wouldn’t be such an unforeseen twist. Opal has been established as a moral person, but her want to prevent her father’s death stems not from some sort of obligation as a daughter or her not wanting a living being to die but from the fact that he’s her father. I still wouldn’t love the ending because I don’t think it’s rational nor do I think it sends a good message to readers dealing with narcissists in their own lives, but with more scenes and more nuance sprinkled in throughout, it could at least be understandable. As it is now, the twist is a bit unexpected, and it’s not fulfilling. I didn’t sign up to read either novel because I wanted to see Opal save her father. The main theme was sold to us as being about freedom all along, and now there’s another element that we haven’t been told is coming. The next question that I want to discuss is does Yong love Opal, and is he an actual narcissist, at least on human terms? Let’s begin with the Peacemaker’s remarks. I don’t think his reasons for advocating that Yong does love Opal are good. A narcissist in real life might not refer to their child as their item, but it makes no difference when one believes that all human beings are meant to serve one, and Yong does not hurt himself for Opal’s sake, he hurts himself for his own sake in an attempt to force Opal to return to him. Yong supported Opal’s decision to attend a college in the DFZ, but it was because Opal chose a degree that suited him. A narcissist can help another person, but it is never for the sake of that other person. A narcissist is unable to view other people as separate entities but tools and extensions of themselves. I do not believe that narcissists are able to love others because love is dependent on viewing those others as people, and Yong has not shown signs of loving Opal, but is he a narcissist? I don’t think there is enough evidence, at least not enough to diagnose him with a clinical level of narcissism. Yong is shown to be entitled and uncomfortable with not being feared and admired, and he believes himself superior or at least different from certain other dragons, refusing to become allies with the Peacemaker. He is unwilling to recognize Opal’s desires and changes the terms of her debt as he wills, though he has a reputation of being fair and levelheaded. However, he hasn’t been shown to be delusional. He doesn’t exaggerate his accomplishments, isn’t envious, and seems to care more about control than adoration: he doesn’t do things with the goal of gaining admirers. He seems controlling of Opal but to what extent? Narcissism is more than simple selfishness: narcissists believe themselves to be the actual center of all other people’s lives. That a child would have interests that differ from theirs and dreams that don’t include them wouldn’t be angering, it would be incomprehensible. Yong doesn’t seem to not comprehend that Opal doesn’t want to return to him, but he doesn’t care too much about what she wants, and this might not be the best method of deciding Yong’s character, but Opal seems like a normal woman other than her fear of being dependent and sometimes self-deprecating attitude toward her magic. Perhaps the author did not mean for me to look up the DSM definition and compare it to her character, but otherwise I’d believe it’s interesting that she uses the exact word “narcissist” as much as she does when she could’ve settled for selfish or controlling or all the other words to describe a bad father figure. Of course, Yong is a dragon, so human perception of things could be inapplicable to him, but non-human beings in this universe has so far been depicted as being comprehensible and even comparable to humans. You might wonder what drove me to spend two paragraphs on whether a character has clinical levels of narcissism, and the reason is because I think the message of this novel changes depending on Yong’s character and Opal’s relationship with him. The final scene is of Opal saving Yong despite all that he’s done to her, the curse and the destruction of her self-esteem as a child included. Extra details about their relationship and Opal’s childhood is the difference between this novel having a nuanced message, even if it’s one that I don’t agree with and one that I don’t think is built up enough throughout the whole series, and being about a woman who risks her own freedom to rescue her abuser. It could be argued that when Opal rescues Yong, the dragon is too weak to hurt her, but there is nothing stopping him from regaining his power and cursing or attempting to kidnap her again after he recovers. From the perspective of gaining her freedom as her most important goal, Yong remaining dead is the surest guarantee. In the version of the novel that I would’ve written, Yong would’ve died. Opal could’ve been sad about his death, but she wouldn’t have risked her freedom to save him, which would’ve been more in line with her behavior and internal thoughts in the first novel and most of this novel. Conclusion A third novel is needed for me to understand the intended theme and message in full and make a final decision of how I feel about the series as a whole. As of now, I think if the author was shooting for the more nuanced ending, she should’ve added in more details about Opal’s relationship with her father throughout the whole series because that twist was unexpected, or perhaps I am bad at expecting twists. Still, I am looking forward to the third novel because the DFZ is a fun place. Originally written 2020 March 22
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