I was introduced to the Amulet series back in 2014, when I found the books in the local library. I had just finished Jeff Smith’s BONE series, and was hungry for more graphic novels. When I picked up Amulet, one of the first things I noticed was that Jeff Smith had praised the series. So I started reading it.
I can now say that the praise was well earned. Coming to the seventh installment, I think that the story hasn’t lost any of its magic.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Amulet #7: Firelight reveals a lot of information. First, there’s Emily’s relationship with her dad. The book begins with one of Emily’s dream: where she was on a camping trip with her father. Except that it never happened, as he died in a car accident a week before they could go.
This scene shines some light on Emily’s dad. He had appeared for a few pages in the series’s prologue, but now we get a better picture of his character: wise and caring. We also learn how much Emily misses her father: his advice, his love, and of course, his presence.
The character of Gabilan is explored further. Initially, we learnt that he was an assassin who dreamt of becoming king, and had been defeated by Emily just before she and her companions entered Cielis. Now, more is revealed. His family was killed by a stonekeeper, which explains his hostility towards the stones, their magic, and their keepers.
And, having spent quite some time studying stonekeepers, Gabilan arrived at a conclusion: that the stone picked people most vulnerable to its power to become stonekeepers. It makes sense, to a degree. Emily, too, say that to Vigo just before they, along with Max, Trellis and Chronos travel to Valcor to fight the Voice.
Also, the Voice is not all that it seems. It appears, in the least, to be unnatural, inserted into the Mother Stone by aliens intending to make Alledia their home. The Voice’s job is to prepare the planet. And, it seems to me that its version of preparation is a massacre of the original inhabitants. It seems to be the only logical reason for the Voice pitting all of its minions, from the Elf King to Emily, against each other. I think that it’s trying to get enough people killed so that its masters have enough living space once they reach Alledia.
But the aliens, too are another story. Virgil, Trellis’s uncle, says that there were 170,000 of them, tended to by 20,000 other parasites, which appear to be the Dark Scouts like Sybrian. It would appear too, that these undiscovered aliens are parasitic, given Virgil’s statement, “Most of them are in hypersleep, tended to by other parasitic organisms on board.” That might explain why they had to leave their first planet.
But this book also clears up another something else. Initially, when Emily and Navin first entered Alledia, they came through a portal. This might suggest that Alledia is in an alternate reality, that is, that Alledia is in a completely different universe. The Voice, however, hints that this is not so, and, as Firelight reveals, it’s probably only a few galaxies away. After all, one of the elves, Tex, says that he joined the Alledian space program so that he could travel to Earth and see the sunsets.
The Voice talked about Earth. It told Emily that the Elf King was planning to travel to Earth. Now know that the Elf King is controlled by the Voice, it would seem that it is not the Elf King that wants to go to Earth, but rather the alien parasites. Seeing too, that they left their first planet because they exhausted its resources, it would make sense that they’re already searching for another host planet beyond Alledia.
All in all, I think that Kazu Kibuishi did a good job with the seventh book. The only thing I have against it is that I felt that it did not cover as much ground as the other books did, but I guess the series does have to answer all the questions that it raised at some point. I highly recommend it.
What thoughts do you have about Amulet?
64th Opinion 
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