Amulet: Waverider, the End of a 16 Year Journey

Amulet, the graphic novel series that a large portion of us have probably enjoyed throughout our elementary and middle school lives, finally concluded with the release of Waverider on February 6th, 2024. Many readers are satisfied with this ending, considering it is the conclusion of a 16-year running story, while others were even very happy. I even got a cool poster with it when I bought it from Barnes & Noble. However, while I am overall satisfied with how the series ended, there is some critique I have in particular against the pacing of not only the most recent one, Waverider, but the previous one as well, Supernova.

First off, we must start where Amulet began: Emily Hayes’ father dies in a car accident at the beginning of the novel. Looking for a fresh start, Emily’s mother decides to move to a new place, where they will live in the old home of Emily’s grandfather, Silas Charnon. There, when Emily and her brother, Navin, are looking through antique things while cleaning the house, she spots a necklace, an amulet, lying on a table. Not stopping even after her arm gets cut by a mechanism on the table, she puts on the amulet, thus letting the chaos begin. These necklaces give people special abilities and powers, being able to control everything as if they have telekinesis. Unfortunately for Emily and her family, a monster known as a shadow detects the powers that Emily doesn’t know she has yet. And so, while Emily’s mother goes to investigate the basement after hearing strange noises down there, she is taken by the shadow. And unfortunately again for Navin and Emily, as they chase after their own mother, it seems as if the world behind them is collapsing. And for the final unfortunate thing, Silas Charnon’s house just happened to serve as a gateway into another world.

Now, we can talk about the pacing, story writing and such for the other books. Even if Amulet was intended for kids while being written, the writing early on was very good and kept me hooked the entire time: As Emily and her family explore through the new world, we’re allowed to experience and get familiar with the world around them. Every panel gives us more comfort in the completely new world, and we start to understand the setting very well. Not only that, but character introductions are very well done, like Leon the fox, a vigilante that intends to protect Emily as she’s still learning to use her amulet, or Miskit, one of the machines that Silas Charnon invented. Even above everything, we see how all of the characters grow, Emily becoming more independent, Navin becoming more and more of a leader despite his young age, and Emily’s mother finally learning how to believe in her children, despite the fear of losing them.

When we finally get to Supernova, however, the main problem is being seen here: the story being rushed. First of all, because Navin and Emily are separated during this book, there are two stories happening at once. While the rushing of the setting is not apparent yet, Emily’s portion of the story seems to be particularly rushed, especially with the new characters it’s introducing. For example, she meets another woman with an amulet, and seven pages later, she figures out that the woman she met is her from the future and all of a sudden a page later, Moses, another character newly introduced, is also her son. While I will say that this book was probably one of the most stunning in the series, along with having a really great setting that Navin is in, it starts to create some problems for the next novel, Waverider.

Waverider in itself is in my opinion, one of the most visually stunning to the story. But remember Emily from the future and also her son? Yeah, we don’t get any context about how that even happened during this book, despite it being the finale, so as readers, we’re stuck here wondering how that phenomenon even happened in the previous book. And before I go on, I have to say this is a very fast paced book. There isn’t the element of getting used to any new settings at all, and they only take place for very short bits at a time. I have to say, many, many new characters are introduced into this book, and despite them playing such an important role, like rebuilding the future of the world, they are barely touched upon and skimmed through. It seemed like they had such important roles but were so small to the plot. If they were an addition a few previous books ago, it would’ve had a lot more potential for the characters to be touching in their own ways, or at least having a harder impact on the story. 

But in the end, a finale is a finale, and if you don’t enjoy one, you’ll be stuck remembering how you were disappointed at the ending for the rest of time. The truth is, Waverider isn’t really a bad book. It seems that Kibuishi, the writer of the series, had a lot to put out, but tried cramming a lot of it into his final books, which created a mood different from the essence of the first few Amulet books. Some may really dislike it, some may feel indifferent towards it. But alas, I just find satisfaction in finally finishing a series that I started all the way back in my 2nd grade classroom.

- Itza