53 pages • 1 hour read
B. B. AlstonAmari And The Great Game
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-26Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Harlowe orders the agents to arrest Maria, then tries to convince Amari to work with her. Harlowe plans to make Amari a star, but Amari refuses. When Harlowe threatens to send Maria to the Sightless Depths if Amari does not cooperate, Amari reluctantly acquiesces. Harlowe makes Maria’s arrest public and tells everyone that Amari was the one who turned her in, which Amari has to confirm to protect Maria.
Chapter 20 Summary
At dinner, Amari and Elsie receive an urgent text from Lara and run up to her room together. The shade has turned Lara’s bedroom inside out by bouncing all over the place. They call Jayden for help, and he immediately soothes the little creature and names him Shadow. The conversation then turns toward Amari and Elsie’s time freeze investigation, and Lara and Jayden both decide to join in. They agree that Amari and Elsie will look into the first time freeze from the Ancient Wars, Jayden will scout for a hidden location for them to meet, and Lara will try to figure out a way for them to sneak into the Supernatural Congress to examine the scene of the freeze.
Chapter 21 Summary
Amari tries to learn more about controlling her weather powers, but she quickly grows frustrated. Maria’s book tells her that taming the wind means taming her own emotions, but Amari is unable to do so.
The next morning at dawn, Elsie drags Amari out of bed to meet with a potential source. Elsie introduces her to Arthur, a Junior Agent from the highly secretive Department of Time Management, who agrees to take them to the Time Management archives to research the first time freeze. There, Amari finds a book about Thomas Fletcher, a werewolf who witnessed the first time freeze incident. As in the freeze she experienced, magicians were not affected, which suggests that a magician must have caused it.
Chapter 22 Summary
Frustrated by her earlier attempts at mastering wind, Amari reads Maria’s book again. She learns that rage and fear are powerful emotions that can help channel storms, but that they can easily corrupt a magician into using foul magick. Drawing on her fear of Dylan, Amari succeeds in creating a breeze.
Later, Amari and the other Junior Agents gather in the gym to practice with their Sky Sprints, magical footwear that help them walk through the air. During the class, Harlowe enters the room with a group of reporters. The Director repeats her usual claims about proving that magicians can contribute to society productively. Tristan, who wants to humiliate Amari, then publicly challenges her to a duel. Amari has no choice but to agree despite her lack of skill with Sky Sprints. Tristan easily overpowers her and taunts Amari until she gets angry and accidentally conjures up a rainstorm. Amari is unable to stop the rain, which infuriates Harlowe. The Director takes Amari into her office to lecture her, but Amari’s ring soon grows hot, signaling that the second game is about to begin. When Harlowe is momentarily distracted, she teleports to the location of the new challenge.
Chapter 23 Summary
Amari finds herself at the top of a dark staircase. She climbs down and reaches a massive, ancient library. She is in the living Library of Alexandria, named after Alexander the Great, the greatest magician in history. Amari is in awe, but reminds herself that she must find the Victor’s Ring. Guided by a mysterious melody, she finds a singing songbook and realizes that all the books are alive. Dylan then appears and attacks her with fireballs. Amari runs through the aisles to escape Dylan, but the fire catches on some bookshelves. The books grow angry and start fighting the intruders. Amari saves a silver book from the fire before entering another room.
She finds herself in a room full of book-handling gloves, where Dylan follows her. The gloves are made out of all kinds of materials, and a bowl of menacing liquid stands in the middle of the room, the Victor’s Ring at the bottom. Dylan and Amari try to determine which gloves to use to retrieve the ring. Amari realizes, after looking at a mural depicting Alexander the Great running into battle, that he valued courage over armor. She plunges her bare hand into the liquid and retrieves the ring, but Dylan overpowers her and steals the ring from her before disappearing. The silver book which Amari saved earlier then helps her escape from her bonds and teleport back to Harlowe’s office.
Chapter 24 Summary
Harlowe and Chief Crowe are stunned to find Amari back in the Director’s office after she mysteriously vanished. Bane then appears on Harlowe’s screen and tells Amari that she is to be stripped of all her privileges, including her membership to the Elites club. Instead, she must wear a “Dangerous” badge and all agents are banned from interacting with her unnecessarily.
Later, Amari shows her the silver book that came back with her from the Library of Alexandria. It contains depictions of enchanted mirrors that reveal moments of Amari and Elsie’s lives. One of the scenes appears to be an ominous warning about Lara, and another one reminds Amari about her fortune cookie prediction.
Chapter 25 Summary
That night, Lara and Amari teleport to the Congress Building with Lara’s father’s stolen transporter. Amari, who is unaffected by the freeze, steps inside the Congress Room while Lara stays behind to stand guard. The frozen leaders all seem to be looking in fear in the same direction, so Amari surmises that they must have recognized the person who caused the freeze. She begins to suspect that Dylan is responsible. Lara then warns her that someone is coming, so the two girls quickly teleport back to their dorm, where Amari shares her suspicions with Lara.
Chapter 26 Summary
The next morning, Amari waves Elsie off as Elsie leaves for a weekend visit to the London Bureau. In the meantime, Amari spends some time with Jayden, who mentions that Julia is doing a livestream to raise money for the UnWanteds who are being deported. Amari realizes that she must stand up for herself and other UnWanteds, so she makes a public statement about Harlowe and Bane’s cruel and unfair treatment of UnWanteds.
Chapters 19-26 Analysis
In the third section of the novel, major plot points and revelations start building up toward the narrative climax. Tension is heightened as the opposing sides of the supernatural conflict take shape. Maria’s arrest, for instance, reveals Harlowe’s open hostility toward magicians and confirms her role as an antagonist. Amari is forced to make a deal with Harlowe to ensure Maria’s safety, underlining her growing awareness that moral choices are not always straightforward.
This section further emphasizes the importance of building community to resist oppression. Lara, Jayden, and Arthur officially join Amari’s investigation, and each brings in their own expertise. Lara uses her father’s connections to help Amari search the Congress Room, Jayden finds a secluded place for the group to meet, and Arthur provides a new lead with Thomas Fletcher’s memory. The characters’ relationships and solidarity reinforce the novel’s message about empathy, trust, and friendship as essential to The Fight for Social Justice.
The clue provided by Fletcher marks a significant turn in Amari’s investigation, reinforcing the theme of The Impact of Familial and Cultural Legacy. Indeed, Fletcher’s memory conflicts with official history, revealing that the Night Brothers were not all-powerful and that there was a time freeze in the past. Amari and her friends begin to realize that constructed narratives can have more power than facts—just as Harlowe suggests in Chapter 8 with her dictum, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” (87). Fletcher’s memory makes clear that important details of the historical record are wrong, raising questions about the cultural legacy of the Ancient Wars more broadly. Alston’s novel emphasizes the distinction between truth and fiction, particularly when the latter is driven by negative impulses like fear (e.g., prejudice toward magicians) or anger (e.g., Bane’s resentment toward UnWanteds). Foul magick feeds on negative emotions, allowing those who wield it to use emotion as a weapon against their enemies. In Chapter 22, Amari tries using her fear to control her weather magic:
If my choices are fear and anger, then I choose fear because I know exactly what scares me most. Dylan. The Great Game. Quinton never waking up. I keep those thoughts in my head, even as they make me squirm with unease. Fingers trembling, I point across the room, demanding the wind obey me. Go!
And then jump as a breeze ruffles Elsie’s hair (260).
Significantly, Amari is driven by her fear for her loved ones, which ensures the morality of her actions. This foreshadows her later dilemma during her duel with Dylan, when she gives in to fear for herself, which briefly turns into hatred. At this point in the story, Amari’s use of her fear creates tension because she has been warned about the potential danger of doing so. Because her fears at this point are selfless, however, her magic remains fair rather than foul.
Narratively speaking, Dylan’s theft of the werewolf’s memory and Amari’s findings in the Congress Room are red herrings, leading the reader to draw conclusions that will ultimately prove false. Amari’s mistaken assumptions eventually build up to the revelation that Dylan was not responsible for the time freeze. Harlowe’s true nature is still mysterious at this point in the story, which heightens the impact of the final plot twist. Amari and Harlowe’s relationship becomes more and more hostile, leading toward the moment when they openly take action to undermine each other. Harlowe makes Amari wear a symbolic “Dangerous” badge, while Amari makes a public statement against Harlowe on Julia’s livestream. This contributes to the novel’s message about The Fight for Social Justice by suggesting that Harlowe’s power is only superficial and that unjust authority can be challenged through organization and direct action.
The Great Game’s second challenge is highly symbolic and, although Amari ultimately loses the Victor’s Ring, she successfully completes the task. This parallels her growing confidence as she learns to embrace both her supernatural abilities and her emotions. Significantly, the challenge takes place in the Library of Alexandria, a reference to a real-life library in Ancient Egypt named after Greek emperor Alexander the Great. Although the Great Library of Alexandria is famously said to have been destroyed by a fire, little information is known about its history. Instead, the Library has become a place of legend, often referenced in art and popular culture to this day. Amari and the Great Game therefore uses the mythology surrounding the Library of Alexandria to enhance the plot. For instance, Alexander’s riddle takes on a mystical dimension, while the sentient books add a sense of wonder. In that location, Amari and Dylan’s rivalry becomes almost mythical, which increases the narrative stakes.
Finally, the book of looking-glasses that Amari brings back from the Library acts as narrative foreshadowing. By showing specific moments from the novel without context, the book creates clues that eventually lead to plot twists, such as Lara’s apparent betrayal and the fortune cookie’s hint about the wraiths.
