How an Ending can Ruin a Story: Akata Witch
A good (not as in happy) ending is an essential component of a good story. While the beginning of a book might be how I get invested in a story, the ending ultimately contributes the most to how I feel about a book after reading it. And that is why bad endings can (and have) ruined stories for me. To dig into this further I will look at how Akata Witch’s ending turned a decent story into a hot mess.
Everyone in our class read Akata Witch last year so I will keep the summary brief. Akata Witch has a fairly standard beginning in low fantasy stories of a girl living a (somewhat) normal life who discovers magic and gets to learn about it. When I started this book I thought it was actually pretty good. It had an interesting magic system where one’s proficiency in the different areas of magic is dictated by the identity of that character (the main character is albino so she has abilities relating to that), along with a bit of mystery on how this world works and I was sufficiently hooked (I’m a sucker for intricate magic systems and interesting fantasy worlds).
My interest stayed for the most part through the middle of the book, although I wasn’t super fond of any of the characters so some of the more character-oriented moments were lost on me. But overall, I was ready to write off this book a pretty good book with a fresh take on magic until the ending ruined the whole book. For some context, Akata Witch ends with a fight between Sunny (the main character) and friends vs Black Hat Otokoto (a ritual killer trying to summon essentially a demon to end the world). While I can get past the whole “the fate of the world depends on us” stuff (us being like 4 random teenagers) I really hate how the final villain is dealt with.
In this battle, Sunny and friends fight fiercely and almost prevent Black Hat from succeeding. But Black Hat sacrifices himself and summons the masquerade (powerful beings from another world that are difficult to control) Ekwensu, who is said to be strong enough to end the world a few chapters ago. Those chapters also mentioned that this being only got sent to the other world due to a set of VERY specific circumstances that would be incredibly difficult to replicate. So how does Sunny, someone who has only started learning magic a few months ago, overcome such a challenge? Maybe by having all her friends work together in one final push? Nope! All of her infinitely more capable friends who have been studying magic their whole lives get sidelined leaving just her vs the most powerful thing in the book so far. Does she overcome this threat in a display of determination or by using unorthodox tactics? Nope again! She instead stops worrying about everyone in her life (I know it's a little random) and activates her super powerful, completely out of nowhere, MC powers. Naturally, she then effortlessly casts one spell to send Ekwensu back (a spell she should not even be able to do), and then boom world saved, no permanent damage, everybody's happy!!!
I think what gets under my skin about this ending (and why it ruined the whole book for me) is how it completely disregards the preestablished magic system. Sunny has been learning magic for a few months. Her friends on the other hand have been learning for SEVERAL YEARS. Of course, this can be done, like maybe Sunny is a magical genius, except she isn’t. Throughout the whole book, Sunny is shown to be pretty incompetent with magic, which makes sense, the magic of this world is very influenced by knowledge; something that takes time to collect. That’s not to say Sunny is powerless; she just displays her strength in other ways, like through soccer. But this ending just makes all the other characters’ struggles seem irrelevant and ruins my favorite component of this book.
Thank you for going so in depth on the reading we did last year. I know that Akata Witch was not among the favorite books read in Language and Literature and I can agree with the many weaknesses you pointed out in this book.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you Ian. Last year, I wrote my Akata Witch essay about how Sunny was utterly useless throughout the whole novel - except for the final fight with Ekwensu, where she randomly does these magic shenanigans out of nowhere?? The ending really ruined the book for me.
ReplyDeleteI must agree with Anthony here. Sunny slowed down the rest of the characters during almost the entire book and the ending was not foreshadowed at all. Sunny's spirit mask was only mentioned once or twice before the ending. The ending is buns.
DeleteI completely agree with this review, the ending really made it worse for me even though I already didn't enjoy the book. I really wish that we could have had a better ending because it could have saved the book altogether. Overall, I think that this review is very well put together and I enjoyed ho you quickly summarized the book to give some context yet got to the point as well :)
ReplyDeleteI have lamented about multiple instances like this before with class-assigned books, so it was great for someone else to understand my woes. I think that it's a common occurence where the MC gets a lot more attention, simply because the whole book surrounds them. Of course, I understand why they would do that (for Sunny's character development), but it's still so frustrating to read!
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Anthony here. Throughout the book we did not see a lot from Sunny who was the main characters. There were also many questions and plot holes that weren't resolved that I wished would've been answered
ReplyDeleteI know it would sound repetitive, but same here, I totally agree with all the comments. I remember being so baffled and flabbergasted when reading the last chapters with Sunny suddenly gaining power from literally nowhere. I don't think my essay from last year even touched a word of this ending because I was so irritated by it \( ' ~ ' )/
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this book review and all the previous comments. Sunny always irked me as she was rash, self-centered, and a generally obnoxious person. And then the ending was the final straw for me; the fact that she just cast some ultra-powerful spell that so happens to solve all of their problems seems to be a sloppy and careless way to end a book. The tension was built up but then the author realized that they had nowhere to go so they ended the book at an abrupt stop.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the story builds up the entire time to lead to her using here newfound magic skills against black hat, but anticlimactically doesn't. Also I think sunny is a conqueror's haki user (one piece reference).
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you here. This book was a very frustrating read. The author built up so much tension as Sunny was learning to use her powers, and magically she was able to solve all of her problems at the end. The book's ending seemed very rushed and abrupt. Excellent review!
ReplyDelete- Asmara
DeleteI absolutely agree with you, Ian. I also realized that the ending was very rushed when I read Akata Witch last year in English class, as if the author carelessly wanted to end the book. So much tension was built up before the ending, and the last thing I expected was Sunny, who was the least-experienced Leopard person in the book, use out-of-pocket magical powers and defeat what is supposed to be the most dangerous masquerade there is. Therefore, I was really irritated and disappointed, greatly lowering my overall rating of the book. Anyways, good job pointing that out in your review!
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you! I read this book the first time when I was 10 years old and absolutely loved it. I'm not quite sure why but maybe just the excitement of fighting at the end really got me so invested. So when we read it last year I was expecting to like it again and maybe it was because I already knew what was happening but I agree that a lot of what had already been told to us as readers has kinda disregarded at the end. I've learned to look for small random details in books because I like a good mystery, so it annoyed me at the end when all this information I had gathered and though I had figured out was pointless. All that being said I loved your review!
ReplyDeleteAs with most of the other people here, I agree with you on this take. I never liked the book, as its seems like a rip off of Harry Potter, or basically any other friends save the world. The bulk of the novel was tolerable, but honestly, If I Ever Get Out Of Here was better. The ending was just complete trash. It wasn't even sad, and after I read, the only thing I could think about was how stupid it was. Anyway, great idea for a post, and nice analysis of how we are all feeling.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you that this was a disappointing ending to a story, and I even started to enjoy it before I reached the ending! Great work!
ReplyDeleteThis was something I agreed with as well! In fact I even made my blog post about this. But, you seemed to go a lot more in depth than I did!
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